


The Fight Game

by kali



Series: A Fighter By His Trade [1]
Category: Agent Carter (TV), Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Boxing & Fisticuffs, Brooklyn Boys, Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes-centric, Bucky Has Daddy Issues, Canon Compliant, F/M, Gen, Historical References, James "Bucky" Barnes & Isaiah Bradley, James "Bucky" Barnes/Dottie Underwood - Freeform, Jewish Bucky Barnes, Light BDSM, M/M, POV Bucky Barnes, Pansexual Bucky Barnes, Period-Typical Ableism, Period-Typical Anti-Semitism, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Racism, Period-Typical Sexism, Pining, Pre-Captain America: The First Avenger, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Service Top Bucky Barnes, Steve Wishes Soldiersexual Was A Thing, so much pining, the best thing about new york city is you and me
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-19
Updated: 2017-12-22
Packaged: 2018-08-23 08:14:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 22,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8320552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kali/pseuds/kali
Summary: Bucky's a boxer, but Steve's always had him on the ropes.--in which Bucky hates his job, loves Steve, and is very, very confused.
(In my head I keep calling this "Bucky Barnes & The Terrible Kinky Sex Crisis of 1941")





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I've tried to tag for content (and will be adding to the tags as the story goes forward) so let me know if there's something you think I should label for. <3

...the soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David and Jonathan loved him as himself.

_1 Samuel 18:1_  

...my Jonathan, thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of woman.

_2 Samuel 1:26_

 

He knows it’s ridiculous, and it’s not like he’s going to admit it to anyone, but what really outrages Bucky about Pearl Harbor is its inconvenience to him, personally. Sure, it’s probably shitty to attack a country without officially declaring war. But it’s not like it hasn’t been obvious which way the wind’s blowing, and Bucky can’t figure out why anyone would think the Japs would want to let people know _before_ they bombed them. It seems kind of counter-productive. Also he can’t see how it would change much if they _had_ announced it or blown a whistle first, or done whatever it is you do beforehand to get a war started, it’s not like the bombs were going to be more or less deadly either way. But most people have this whole thing about ‘playing fair’ that Bucky doesn’t really get. Probably it makes sense, it’s honorable, if you think the other guys are also going to do the right thing. But it’s war, right? The whole point is that you think they won’t.

If you’re going to think too hard about a fight, which he doesn’t actually recommend, but if you just can’t help yourself, Bucky thinks it makes a lot more sense to worry about whether you actually want to be having that particular fight in the first place instead of being fussy about how you’re going to fight it after you get started. That’s just a waste of time. He figures he can call it a win as long as he’s still standing by the end and anyone who has fucked with him is sincerely regretting it. He doesn’t really care how he gets to that point as long as he does.

The streets are cold and dark and the key sticks in the lock when he gets to the gym, so he has to stand around freezing while he blows on it till it warms up enough to turn. He is exactly on time to meet Steve, which is aggravating because Steve can get distracted within a single city block, let alone the twenty-minute trip from his place to Flatbush. He’ll stop to sketch something or start thinking too hard and miss the streetcar or, god forbid, get into it with some asshole. Usually Bucky plans better than this because he _hates_ waiting for Steve anywhere.

So now that he’s miscalculated, of course Steve is running up on late. And knowing Steve, that probably means he’s found trouble somewhere along the way. Bucky starts to think seriously about going out to look for him, but it’s only been a few minutes so far and it’s four-thirty in in the morning. Who is even out on the street right now besides the milkman? Even Steve couldn’t get into a fight with the milkman. Probably. The other thing to consider is if he _does_ go out to look for Steve and it turns out he’s just moving slow then Bucky will never hear the end of it.

***

When they heard about Pearl Harbor last Sunday, they were listening to the afternoon Dodgers game on the radio at Steve’s apartment like usual. (Well, Steve calls it an apartment. Bucky thinks it’s a badly ventilated flophouse shoebox and points this out whenever possible. After Steve’s mother died in ‘36, Bucky had tried to suggest that it would be fun for the two of them to move in together. Steve just shook his head, so Bucky had added that he was a man of twenty, and it was really way past time for him to get out of his folks’ place. If that was so, Steve had said flatly, why hadn’t he gone in with Frankie Sullivan when he’d been looking for a guy to split the rent last month? When Bucky politely asked what the hell Frankie Sullivan had to do with anything and why did Steve hate fun, Steve had just grimaced and said, “Not just fun, Buck, _charity_.” And that, as they said, was that. The most annoying part was that of course he spent more time at Steve’s place then he did at his own, so the fact that it had no amenities whatsoever actually bothered him way more than it did Steve, who really didn’t give a shit what kind of hole he lived in as long as he had his books and his art stuff.)

It had been kind of a boring game up until then, actually, the Bums were beating the Giants fourteen to nothing, and he’d had his feet up on the ratty-ass couch, was thinking about going out on the fire escape to have a cigarette, but kind of avoiding it because it was really cold outside. If it hadn’t been December, he might’ve risked Steve’s breathing and opened the window to smoke inside, but the place was already drafty as hell and he didn’t want Steve to catch pneumonia _again_. He was placing a private bet with himself over exactly how long Steve would last before telling him to get his shoes off the goddamn sofa when the news broke in to the game and the blazing look in Steve’s eyes told him that everything was about to change forever.

***

He can’t really remember anymore how exactly he met Steve. Probably he’d been around seven. There’s a kind of vague Before Steve period in his mind, but it’s blurry and besides that, he keeps putting Steve in his memories even when he definitely hadn’t been there. He does remember when he and Steve became best friends, though, instead of just friendly acquaintances. He’d probably turned eleven already, so Steve was still nine or ten. School was out and Bucky had been at a loose end when he’d seen Steve edging away from the usual afternoon stickball game like a man on a mission. Bucky had followed him, curious, and somehow they'd started talking and it didn’t seem to matter that they weren’t in the same grade or that Bucky was popular with everyone and Steve was popular with no one. They’d climbed down to the river eventually, out by the Manhattan Bridge, thrown a bunch of rocks, tried to catch a rat in the mudflats, looked out at the gray water and the gray Manhattan skyline that looked like the city’s bones were pressed out and flattened, faded yellow by the heat. Of course neither of them was supposed to go so far from home, but they’d gotten away with it, and that was the beginning of what Bucky would always think of as the best summer, the summer by which all other summers would pale in comparison.

Bucky dragged Steve along to play ball in vacant lots and in Prospect Park; when they could scrounge carfare, they visited Bucky’s numerous aunts and uncles and cousins on the lower East Side, in Hell’s Kitchen and in the Bronx, from where it was real easy to sneak off to swim in the Hudson; and one time, Steve’s mother accompanied them to the museum over on Eastern Parkway, where Bucky would never have thought of going in a million years, but also where he ended up staring at paintings for minutes at a time with his eyes blown wide open, feeling as if he were drowning in colors and lines. Some of the brushstrokes were savage and vicious, as if someone were attacking the painting; some were delicate with sharp angles and fine edges. But they were beautiful and somehow he was breathless and angry and exhilarated. He couldn’t explain how it made him feel, but he thought Steve understood.

They did stupid shit, too, which, well, Bucky had tried to act like he thought it was dumb kid stuff, but he probably enjoyed it even more than Steve, who just always did whatever he wanted without worrying about what other people thought about it. They used to pretend to be explorers or soldiers or spies or something out of whatever the new book or comic or radio play was. Bucky had brought up aliens one time and Steve explained that he liked it to be realistic, which Bucky thought was ridiculous—if you could imagine anything, what was the point of _realistic_ —but went along with anyway, because it was fun. Especially after they started this long-running elaborate game where Steve was captured and it was Bucky’s job to make him talk.

Steve tried to be very conscientious about offering Bucky his turn to be the good guy, until eventually Bucky had to put a stop to it by telling him that he actually preferred it the way they had it. “I don’t know, it’s fun,” he tried to explain. “The bad guy is the one that does stuff, you know? The good guy just... responds.” Steve didn’t really get it, but he didn’t have to, so long as they were both having a good time. The other part, which Bucky wouldn’t have confessed, was that Steve really liked being the good guy, and Bucky’s actual favorite thing was watching Steve like stuff.

When they’d finally worked out the game to their satisfaction, there were rules. It had started out as this intense version of hide-and-seek where Steve would try to make it through a given territory without Bucky catching him. But Bucky was better at finding him then Steve was at getting away, so they added this other level to it, where Steve would draw some kind of map or code and hide it somewhere and Bucky would have to try and get the location out of him. It was actually kind of hilarious because it worked out the same way every time: Bucky would catch Steve very quickly and basically nothing he could do would make Steve give up the information. But it was great.

Sometimes Bucky used to try to really scare Steve. He wouldn’t have _hurt_ him or anything, not really—although sometimes he wondered what it would be like if he did. But he did enjoy coming right up on the edge of it. It felt fantastic, like he could just reach out his hands and tear him apart if he wanted to, and Steve wouldn’t stop him, in fact the best part was knowing he could do anything he wanted to, anything at all, he could turn it around and make Steve laugh or he could try to make him cry or yell or just set his chin and refuse to give in. He was pretty sure Steve liked it, too, or they wouldn’t have kept doing it, and anyway he could have stopped Bucky anytime by giving up. Bucky figured it was like going to see a Lon Chaney picture; it was horrible and you were scared shitless while it was happening, but that was what made it fun. Also Steve really, really enjoyed winning, and he liked knowing that Bucky couldn’t make him do anything he didn’t want to do. Bucky didn’t know if he would have enjoyed switching parts, but that never happened so it didn’t matter and besides Steve would have been completely shit at it anyway, it would have been so boring. Steve was clever, really clever, but he wouldn’t have been any good at thinking up terrible things to do to people.

Steve was eleven and Bucky was twelve-going-on-thirteen the year Bucky got a sore throat, Steve caught his sore throat, which became rheumatic fever, and fear blew into Bucky’s life like a freight train and never quite left. Steve had just been starting to hit a growth spurt, but he’d never catch up to Bucky now. Steve’s mother who was incredibly undemonstrative, explained it all to him without any particular emotion: Steve’s heart had been affected so he would have to rest more and couldn’t be running all over the city with Bucky.

Bucky wasn’t stupid, he could add two and two and get four as well as most people. It didn’t take a genius to see—what with the asthma, the scarlet fever that had left him a little deaf in one ear and now this heart thing—that Steve might not make it all the way to high school, if he even got that far. He had to start thinking about the future. The problem with Steve was that he wasn’t practical. _Bucky_ was practical; he could see he had two options. One, he could cut his losses and gently separate himself from Steve before anything too terrible happened. It wouldn’t be that hard. This was why he’d made Steve come hang out with his old crowd from time to time, and why he kept relations with them friendly even if Steve didn’t get along that well with them. He could ease back into the gang if he wanted to, without making it a big deal. Sure, he’d probably never be able to have a real conversation ever again, but it wasn’t like he’d die of loneliness or anything, it would be annoying but he could do it. Two, he could keep going the way he had been. In which case, either Steve would die young and then Bucky would have the entire rest of his life to do all the other stuff that people thought you should do, or he wouldn’t, and then Bucky could keep on having his best friend. It didn’t end up being a hard decision.

Of course, while he now had a lot invested in keeping Steve ticking along through the rest of school, it seemed like _Steve_ didn’t care much about it at all, which drove him crazy. He also suddenly felt like he had to be very careful with Steve all the time, which was irritating, so basically he wandered around being pissed-off and terrified all the time and trying desperately to hide it. In hindsight, he realized it was possible that this had made him act like kind of a jerk. And he could see that to Steve it might have read as... smothering. Maybe. But he’d never told Bucky to take a hike, so it was probably okay.

It was a long time before he’d understood what was going on with Steve, who never referred to his own health if he could help it and was, as far as Bucky could tell, completely oblivious to the fact that he might not be able to physically handle all the stuff other guys could. At first Bucky had found it hard to believe that someone so smart could have so little sense, but eventually it'd become clear that Steve was perfectly realistic about what he could do, if you realized that he didn’t care at all about what kind of shape he was in when he was done. It actually made a weird Steve-type of sense, but that didn’t mean Bucky had to like it.

***

Bucky’s been standing still all this time in the dark like a complete idiot, so he shakes his head, takes a deep breath, and tries to get his thoughts in order. He turns on the lights, slings his jacket over the bench by the boxing ring along with his bag, takes off his tie, rolls up his shirtsleeves, shucks off his shoes and socks. He thinks about changing, but he’s not here for himself, so he decides not to bother. He probably won’t even work up a sweat today. Somehow he wants to start pacing, which is both ridiculous and kind of a foreign sensation; he’s usually real good at staying still when he wants to. But right now, he feels pulse-pounding frustration coiling tensely inside him like a spring. It wants to bounce him right off the balls of his feet. It would be great to lose some of this energy before Steve arrives. He looks at the speed bag, considering, but Steve could show up any minute and the last thing he needs is to get sidetracked from what he’s supposed to be doing here. He should really lower the bag for Steve anyway; it’s set up for a taller guy.

Boxing earns Bucky decent money and he’s good at it. Sometimes he likes it a lot. He started because Jimmy Barnes would have laid down on the ground and died if his son hadn’t put the gloves on, and by the time Bucky realized that he didn’t really care if his old man did die from the disappointment, it was already too late, he had the taste for it. He tells Steve he likes it because it’s the greatest sport in the world; he tells Steve that he’s gonna hit the big time and fight at the Garden or the Polo Grounds, get rich quick. He worries sometimes that he does it just because he likes hitting people. This one time his dad had caught him beating the crap out of Ratface Pacelli (his name was actually something like Donnie, but he never got anything besides Ratface) and didn’t bawl him out for fighting like he felt he had a right to expect. Instead he told Bucky—almost fondly—that all kids get into fights, but most guys are afraid to hurt the other fella, most guys are too chicken-shit to aim for the face, most guys don’t like to see all the blood. “Glad to see _you’re_ not a sissy,” his dad said, “at least there’s that, thank Christ,” and Bucky had grinned shakily at him, trying not to cry, trying to hide how small and ashamed he felt knowing for sure that he was wrong inside, wanting so badly to be like the other guys his dad was talking about instead of like himself.

He thinks about where Steve’s head measures on his own chest and fixes the bag so it’ll be just about level with his face. Just as he’s doing that, Steve finally, finally shows up at the top of the stairs.

“Decided to put in an appearance after all, your majesty?” Bucky yells up at him.

Steve glares back. “I’m not that late,” he says, coming down the stairs. “Let’s get started.” He strips his coat off, puts his hands up, and squares off as if he’s ready to go a few rounds with Bucky right this second.

“Take it easy, pal,” Bucky says. “We’re not there yet. First thing, go change.”

“I didn’t bring—”

Bucky cuts him off by throwing a pair of Matty’s old athletic shorts—his little brother’s thinner than him—at Steve, who eyes them as if they’re a bomb that’s about to explode all over him. “Everything else off, Rogers. Including the shoes.” He tries not to laugh at Steve’s expression. “I mean, you can leave on your undershirt if you want.”

Steve disappears towards the changing room, but not before rolling his eyes at him, as if Bucky doesn’t know he’s shy stripping off, like probably anyone would be who didn’t parade around half-dressed for a living. When he comes out, he’s— _of course_ —stripped to the waist because if there’s anything Steve Rogers can’t resist, it’s a dare. At least this makes it easy to see that the trunks aren’t too loose around Steve’s skinny hips, so it seems like he did okay when he took them in last night. They’ll get the job done.

“Aren’t you gonna get changed yourself, Buck?” Steve asks.

“Nah, we’re not even gonna get to sparring today. Today it’s Patsy’s jump rope and some exercises.”

“ _Bucky_ ,” he says, exasperated. “I told you, I’m doing this for real. If you don’t want to help, that’s fine, but I can’t have you babying me like I’m some kind of infant.”

He sighs. “I get it, Steve. I know you want to fight. But see, this isn’t about boxing exactly. You already know how to throw a punch, buddy.” Steve doesn’t respond, so Bucky tries again. “Look, you asked for me to prep you for basic training with some boxing lessons and then gave me three weeks before you’re heading down to the induction center. _Three goddamn weeks._ We just gotta get you into the best shape of your life, we’re not trying to go ten rounds with Joe Louis here.”

Steve looks serious for a second and then grins at him. “You really making me use your baby sister’s jump rope?”

“Well, I’m not lending you mine, punk.” Steve falls all over himself laughing like the idea of Bucky skipping rope is the funniest thing ever. Bucky doesn’t care; he’s pretty sure Steve will be laughing out of the other side of his mouth when he has to try it. Come to think of it, Patsy could probably teach him a thing or two.

Unsurprisingly, it turns out that Steve has no sense of rhythm at all. Bucky shows him how to grip the rope between his fingers, how to hold it with his arms bent at the elbow instead of straight out. He demonstrates the motion for Steve and then stands back. Steve takes the rope back from him, holds it right, tries to get it going and hop at the same time, trips all over himself and then glares up at Bucky, daring him to say something.

Bucky just shakes his head and watches as Steve tries again. This time, he tries to slow it down, but of course you can’t really get yourself going if you don’t spin the rope fast enough. He manages to watch Steve tangle himself up four times before he takes the rope away and thinks for a minute— _skipping rope makes you light on your feet; it keeps you going in a rhythm without getting tired; it makes your hands and feet work together; but really the point is to keep moving, moving, moving_ —“So,” he says, “since getting over the rope’s not really working—”

Steve gives him an apologetic grin. “Fine, fine,” he says. “Little girls all over Brooklyn got me beat.”

Bucky smiles back. “Only ‘cause you never let me teach you to dance.”

“Uh-huh,” Steve says. It’s an old argument.

“Because you’re a stubborn asshole.”

Steve raises his eyebrows at him, gives him a half smile and a one-shouldered shrug— _yeah and what’re you gonna do about it_ —and Bucky just sighs because of course the answer is nothing.

“I’ll get the hang of it, Buck. Just need some more practice. I mean, if Patsy can do it—”

“Yeah, I’ll let you tell her that. Look, it’s just there to help you keep time, okay? I’ll show you.” Bucky loops the rope in one hand and starts spinning it by his side, counting one, two, three, four, every time the rope hits the ground. Then he jumps, again: _one, two, three, four_ , showing Steve how he skips every time the rope smacks the floor. “The rope goes down, you go up, okay?”

He has to count for Steve right at first but he catches on pretty quick after that.

Steve manages to go for almost three-quarters of a minute at a time before he gets tired, which Bucky is pretty impressed by, considering. Then he has to show Steve how to wrap his hands before letting him near the bags. Steve’s hands and feet are unexpectedly large for his body, it’s like they belong to the man he was supposed to be before all his energy went into keeping his heart beating instead of growing.

Some people probably think Steve is the one who can’t get by without Bucky, when in fact it is and has always been the other way around. Bucky feels lonely all the time, even though he’s almost always in a crowd. He’s alone with his family, with the guys at the bar and at the gym, sometimes in the arms of a girl, sometimes even between her thighs. Not with Steve, though, never with Steve.

It’s not as if Bucky is known for underrating himself. He’s aware Steve prefers his company to most other people, would be sad if Bucky were gone. He might starve, maybe. He might get killed in some dumbass fight. But mentally, where it counts, he’d get along, he’d be okay. Bucky, on the other hand, would absolutely not be okay and he knows that, too.

It’s probably a little strange that Steve knows so little about boxing, apart from Bucky showing him a few crosses and hooks. Steve lets Bucky into almost every aspect of his life: they go to the movies together, to baseball games, to Coney Island, to the automat, to bars they shouldn’t waste money on; Steve makes him go to political protests and lectures (Steve is an ardent socialist; Bucky votes the straight Democratic ticket just like almost everyone else he knows). He picks Steve up from his sign-painting jobs all the time and he knows a hell of a lot more about art than most college students, which he tells himself isn’t too shabby for someone who only graduated high school.

He wonders from time to time if Steve notices how hard Bucky tries to keep him separate from his work and if he cares about being on the outside, not even looking in. It’s not that Bucky likes keeping things from Steve and it’s not like he’s ashamed of him either. He wishes things were different. It’s just that Steve is too good for all that bullshit: the managers peddling their tired old pipe dreams; the idiots who hang out at the gym, posturing as they envision that big break they imagine they’ve earned; the lookie loos who come out to drool over the fellas flexing their muscles; and last, but certainly not least, the assholes he fights with and therefore has to drink with, at least sometimes. Bucky spends a lot of time with people he can’t stand and he can’t really stand himself when he’s around them either. He doesn’t want Steve to see him like that.

***

Steve is 5’4” and a hundred pounds soaking wet on a good day. Steve’s mother died of tuberculosis. Steve has asthma and a shitty ticker. Bucky is 95% sure that there is no way that they’ll take him into the service. Not unless half the other men in America have been abducted by aliens. There’s this other niggling 5% of worry though that just won’t go away. Because Steve is a pretty convincing talker, unless he’s trying to have a conversation with a woman, and there won’t be any of those at the induction center. What if he can persuade them into giving him a shot?

After all, Bucky has found himself in all kinds of situations that he never would have, except that Steve has the ability to make insane plans sound not only plausible, but good, right, necessary, and above all, inevitable. It’s only afterwards, when Bucky is scraping Steve off of wherever they’ve ended up, that it sinks in, what a fucking terrible idea the whole thing was in the first place. That’s also usually when Bucky wants to go back in time and punch his past self in the face, because he never ever learns.

Like hell he’s going to let Steve go to war without him. But what if Steve ends up 4F as he most likely will? Bucky really doesn’t want to get shipped off to the Pacific alone by accident. The best way is to handle it, he’s decided, is to let Steve try to sign up first. If Steve makes it in, Bucky will just have to talk his way into the same assignment; it’s definitely possible, since everyone knows guys who enlist have a chance to pick where they go. If Steve doesn’t make it, well, Bucky guesses he’ll try to act disappointed, but probably not very hard.

At least he doesn’t need to consider his own draft card in the mix: Tommy Reilly is his manager and has fingers in all the local fights, and also the local draft board; in fact, Tommy Reilly is, well, connected, not to put too fine a point on it, and as long as Bucky fights the way he wants him to, maybe does a little work for him on the side, he’s pretty sure he won’t have to go any place he doesn’t want to go. So he’ll do that if he has to, no problem. Why not? It’s just more of the same.

He knows he should want to go to war, to fight. He hurts people for a living after all; why not do it for a good reason? His Aunt Syd and Uncle Norman look at him now, expectant, like, why doesn’t he just sign up? Hasn’t he heard the terrible stories about the rest of the family, still in Europe? He wouldn’t even go over there anymore except that Rebecca lives with Aunt Syd, always has, since right after she was born and their mother died like a one-two punch.

His mother was Jewish, so he knows he’s supposed to be, too, and it’s not like he wouldn’t mind giving the finger to his dad, who would definitely blow his top. But he just doesn’t feel much when he thinks about it. He can’t imagine how or why his parents ever got together, or more to the point, why she was dumb enough to marry him. Probably they’d had to get married, probably it was his own fault, James Buchanan Barnes showing up and causing trouble like usual (well, not like usual, exactly, he hopes he wouldn’t be that kind of shitheel, to get a girl in trouble like that with no eye to the future). Anyway, it’s all kind of funny, if you look at it right. Or maybe funny’s not the right word. But it sure seems like it should’ve been a great love story, the Jewish girl, the boy Black Irish, kind of like Romeo and Juliet. Except Jimmy Barnes couldn’t have cared all that much about her, since he married again not six months after she was cold in the ground, a regular old Christian this time, none of the complications. Bucky doesn’t mind that Matt and Patsy were born, but he doesn’t call their mother anything. It’s amazing how much you can get away with just pronouns.

The thing is, Bucky doesn’t want to be a soldier. He’s never been good at doing what he’s told. Besides, he loves Brooklyn. He loves the city, too, the lights, the noise, jazz up in Harlem, good restaurants when he can afford them. Who would he even be without going dancing, without girls to take out and show a good time to, without Steve? What if he were crippled for life? Dying might be better, if it were quick. But what if it wasn’t. Christ, he hates knowing he’s so gutless, but there’s no point in lying to himself: he’s fucking terrified.

“So,” Steve says when they’re sitting on the floor back against the wall and he’s caught his breath after going at the speed bag a little bit. “How’d you talk your way in here so early anyway?”

“Eh,” Bucky says, shrugging a little, “Goldie doesn’t care. He knows I clean up after myself. I like to get in early sometimes, without all the guys here.”

“You get up early in the morning on purpose? I’ll believe it when I see it.” Steve scoffs, elbowing him in the ribs.

Bucky really does only like seeing early mornings from the wrong side. But he’s never been so grateful for those few solitary hours in the gym. It means he can make Steve do all his calisthenics indoors, instead of being forced to watch him run around outside in zero degree weather or something. “You’re seeing it now, aren’t you?” he says, elbowing back.

“Yeah, and I think I also just saw a pig fly by over there.”

Bucky looks at Steve out of the corner of his eye, checking him over for pain or injury; he’s good at doing that without letting Steve notice. He sees drops of sweat glistening on the sharp edge of his collarbone and wants to reach out and grab him, just press his thumb into the hollow where the tendon and bone meet next to Steve’s throat, wants to put all his weight on him and keep him there, pinned. It’s when he realizes that his mouth’s gone dry and he’s started to lick his lips that he has to pull himself up with a jerk. This, this is not okay. Not when Steve’s sitting right next to him with his shirt off, with sweat dampening his legs, with his hipbones showing, with his slightly-too-long hair falling on his forehead, all tousled. Bucky wants to run his fingers through it, push it off his face.

He gets up as quickly as he can without making it look strange. “C’mon, champ, get your lazy ass up. Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither are you.”

Bucky makes Steve stop at six-thirty when he’s had more than enough for a first time session; it would be nice if Steve wouldn’t argue with him about it, but it would also be nice if he woke up with one morning with a million dollars lying around and that's pretty much just as likely to happen. At least all the exercise means that Steve is pretty hungry, so bullying him into letting Bucky buy them a real breakfast at the automat isn’t as hard as it could’ve been. The gym’ll be open for business in a half hour and ordinarily Bucky might’ve stuck around to do a little work himself, but he’s got a fight tonight, so he needs to go home and sleep anyway. As they lock up, Bucky is already planning what he’ll say to convince Steve that he should get the twenty-five cent breakfast instead of the fifteen. Maybe they can compromise on the twenty; that comes with the ham and egg, and the cream of wheat, so it’s not a bad way for Steve to start the day.

**  
**


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm on tumblr @ [superkalifragilistic](http://superkalifragilistic.tumblr.com/). You should come play with me as I roll into this fandom two years late and act like it's all shiny and new! Because apparently it's all I can think about? Send help. Also if you want the picture that is the parallel evolution of this fic, well, look no further: [boxing bucky is here for your viewing pleasure](http://superkalifragilistic.tumblr.com/post/152035860007/this-isnt-the-picture-that-started-it-all-but-it/). Beautiful, beautiful things happen when you google sebastian stan & boxing, my friends. 
> 
> content note: there's some bullying in this chapter and a main character responds in kind.

The meanest thing Bucky ever did in his life was for Steve and he would’ve been fine with that, except it also turned out to be the dumbest. His only excuse—well, he really didn’t have one, did he? At least not one that Steve understood. This was back when Steve was in ninth grade, just starting out high school and Bucky was in tenth, happy for them to be back in the same school again. They’d spent a good part of the summer making this comic, sort of inspired by Tarzan and _The Jungle Book_ , except funny—Steve liked drawing animals in really weird situations. (After the rheumatic fever, Bucky spent a lot of his time coming up with ideas to make sitting around as tempting as running all over the place. This wasn’t usually very successful, so when he hit on one that worked, he hung onto it like grim death.) Bucky didn’t do much of the artwork but he came up with most of the dialogue and carefully penciled it into the speech bubbles.

Since he didn’t have the brains god gave a pigeon, Steve had brought the sketchbook into school and apparently decided that it was a good idea to start drawing in it in front of the guys. Of course this happened when Bucky wasn’t there to step in, so when he did finally make it out to the schoolyard, the sketchpad was in a puddle, its pages every which way, filthy and crumpled; Steve was getting up off the ground, all bloodied up but still ready to fight; and Joe Daly was laughing and calling him a fairy.

Joe was a year younger than Bucky, so all he really had to do was show up and loom sort of menacingly behind Steve, and he backed down in an instant while the rest of the group evaporated apologetically—as if they hadn’t stood there watching it happen and making fun. That didn’t fix the sketchbook, though, or the look on Steve’s face and Bucky would have ripped Joe Daly into shreds with his teeth if it meant that Steve didn’t have to know that there were assholes like that out there. But of course he couldn’t do that, so he patted Steve’s back clumsily, they plucked their ruined work up out of the puddle and he refrained from telling Steve that it had been really stupid to bring the thing to school in the first place.

He’d waited more than three weeks, which was something like a century in school-time, until he was fairly sure everyone had forgotten the whole thing. He waited, even if he was positive Joe was still hassling Steve from time to time, when Bucky wasn’t around. Steve refused to say anything about it, but it was pretty clear what was going on. Finally he bought Maggie Daly a chocolate egg cream after school and then he was walking her home, and after a couple of days, she let him kiss her at the door. Pretty soon, she was sneaking him into the house so they could neck in her room. Even though Steve had grown up here, just like Bucky, somehow he kept himself to himself. He didn’t ever mention the neighborhood stories and scandals; maybe it was because he had to stay indoors so much, or maybe he just didn't care, but either way, he didn’t know all the people like the back of his own hand. And Daly and his crowd thought messing with him was safe.

“Joey,” Bucky’d said, smiling with all his teeth, when Joe found him leaning against the wall in a carefully chosen alley by his building. “Been meaning to catch up with you.”

“Yeah?” he replied, suspicious, which frankly showed more good sense then Bucky had thought he was capable of.

“You know, Maggie’s pretty nice,” he said, still smiling.

“You talkin’ bad about my sister, Barnes?” Joey ruffled up like he could do something about it if he wanted to.

“Nah, she’s real nice, I told you.” He let the smile slide off his face. “Not like you, though, right? You’re the kind of fella who gets his kicks pounding kids smaller than you.”

The penny dropped. “Is this about Rogers? Christ, what a little punk. He been whining to you, huh? Figures,” he says, throwing up his hands like it’s been obvious all long. “We’re just having some fun with him, Bucky, no big deal.”

Bucky smiled again. “Aw, Joey,” he said, dragging out the name. “It _is_ fun, isn’t it? Kinda mean of you to keep it all to yourself though. Don’t I get a turn?” He held out the two baseball cards and the postcard he’d found in the kid’s room when he ransacked it on the theory that everyone keeps _something_ stupid and precious around that they’d really hate to lose. “Under the mattress, Joe, really? Be more creative.”

Everyone who paid attention knew Mr. Daly had run off with another lady and a lot of people wondered if he and Mrs. Daly had ever even been married in the first place. All he’d left Joe with, it turned out, were three dilapidated pieces of cardboard, one with a carelessly scribbled four-word birthday message on it. Looking at Joe’s blanched face, Bucky thought some people didn’t know when they were well off.

Joe tried to grab for the cards, but Bucky was taller and much stronger so it was kind of a lost cause. It _was_ a little fun, he had to admit, dramatically ripping one of the baseball cards into little bitty pieces as the kid tried and failed not to cry.

“So, here’s how it’s gonna work,” Bucky said. “You got one week to let me see some improvement in how you’re treating my buddy, Steve. If I’m happy, maybe you’ll get your postcard back at the end of the week.”

Bucky’d waited patiently for Joe to stop crying, until he was just sort of gasping and hiccuping. “What about the other card?” he asked finally, running his sleeve over his nose and mouth and smearing snot and dirt all over.

“Oh, this?” He held it up. “Zack Wheat, huh? Good taste. I think I’ll give this one to Rogers. Seeing as how you owe him and all. What do you say?”

“I’ll tell Maggie,” Joe threatened desperately. “She’ll dump you in a second.”

Bucky had laughed. “Go ahead. Besides who do you think she’ll believe, Joey? I’m sweet as pie to her. Are you?” And then he had strolled off because this was the part he’d been waiting all month for, the part where he brought Steve his revenge like a cake on a platter.

It did not work out the way he hoped.

Steve was not happy, not even a little bit. Steve was furious, but worse, he was horrified. He looked at Bucky like—like he didn’t know who he was, like he’d turned Bucky over like a rock and seen something nasty growing underneath. Steve asked him if this was why he’d been going around with Maggie, and Bucky had to admit it mostly was. He hadn’t known about Joe’s father, of course, so he needed an explanation for that. And then, the very next day, Steve took the baseball card and gave it _back_. He told Bucky distantly to do whatever the hell he wanted with the postcard and although what Bucky  _wanted_ to do was rip it up, stuff it in Joe’s mouth, and make him _eat_ it, he waited the specified week and gave it back. He didn’t stop walking Maggie home from school or buying her sodas at the drugstore in front of all her friends, but he did stop going up to her room and after he’d made a few excuses for that, she wound things up with him pretty quick.

Joe didn’t bother Steve anymore after that, but Bucky never forgot it, that horrible drop in his stomach when he thought Steve might not want to be friends anymore, when he thought that was probably what he deserved. That was why he had to keep remembering it, too, even though it was one of his worst memories; he had to, because otherwise he might do something like that again—it came so naturally—and then Steve might finally realize he was better off without him. Looking after Steve became a lot more complicated after that, because he always had to remember that he couldn’t do anything that Steve wouldn’t want to do himself.

Since then he’s almost never been able to use what he generally thinks of as the most effective strategy, the shortest distance between two points. In a way, this is irritating, but he’s got that coming, and also, well, it feels sort of okay. Better, even, like he could do something without causing all kinds of damage in his wake.

***

Bucky still lives at his folks’ place because it’s easier than doing anything else. He started paying board five years ago, when he was eighteen. It made sense: forking over cash every week meant there was food on the table when he needed it and clean clothes, plus they couldn’t tell him what to do anymore, which had been the main drawback before. Lately he’s been able to throw in a little more and that makes things even better. So long as he’s going to live here, he has to know for sure that he doesn’t owe Jimmy a damn thing, and every extra dollar he hands over just feels like more proof. And well, it’s fun making sure Matt and Patsy can buy the same dumb things their friends get—sure, they’d never go hungry or have to quit school; their mother’d make sure of that. Those are the big things, of course. But sometimes Bucky wonders if anyone besides him cares about making sure that people get the little things, too, the things that don’t have a point beyond just feeling good, the things that get you through the day.

So, things are mostly fine now that the purses have gotten bigger. The only downside is how infrequently he fights these days—when Bucky started out, he fought twelve or even fourteen times a year, the same way everyone does. Now it’s more like once every two or three months. This is objectively better, but fight days are the only days when the old man never goes near him and Bucky could use days like that happening more regularly.

Over the years, Bucky has come to realize that while Jimmy Barnes is completely worthless as a father, he isn’t the worst trainer in the world. When Bucky can manage to keep his lip buttoned, they work okay together. Obviously, Jimmy thinks the same, because son or no son, he wouldn’t give Bucky the time of day if he couldn’t deliver and it’s not like he doesn’t have other promising up-and-comers in his stable. Still, Bucky does like to imagine hitting the big time and ditching Jimmy like a bad habit, in favor of a new trainer and sparring partners that maybe won’t be assholes. Ungrateful son that he is, he’ll probably get thrown out of the house, which would be fantastic: he could leave entirely guilt-free and with enough dough to buy a huge-ass brownstone all his own, in Park Slope or maybe even in Manhattan.

Actually, he has this whole daydream worked out along these lines, in which Rebecca may or may not be married to Steve and living happily in the garden apartment, while Bucky indulges his wild bachelor lifestyle on the top two floors as well as in hotels and nightclubs across the country. On weekends, when he’s not traveling, they’ll have barbecues in the garden and grill up steaks, seared just off purple the way he likes. (Steve will say that he’s seen cows hurt worse than that and live and Bucky will wonder out loud where exactly Steve ever saw a live cow in the first place.) They’ll roast potatoes in the coals and Rebecca will slice up glistening red beefsteak tomatoes and crisp green stalks of celery. Maybe there’ll be some kids running around underfoot—Steve would make a great father—and they’ll take them to the game on Sunday afternoons, get them hot dogs and cokes while he and Steve drink cold beers from behind the first base line. He could treat Steve and Rebecca to meals in the very best restaurants—who wouldn’t spoil their little sister to death if they had the opportunity? No one would find that strange—and as long as he’s daydreaming, Steve would let him pay without a hassle, since they’d be family for real.

That last part’s not realistic, but if he worked real hard at it, Bucky might be able to make the other parts happen. Steve isn’t great with women—it’s not that he’s shy exactly, it’s more that he thinks of them as strange, foreign creatures that he’s got no common language with. Either he goes all terse and silent—and his date thinks he hates her—or he just abruptly spits out whatever’s on his mind without pausing to think how it might come off. Anyway, women don’t seem all that impressed. But Steve’s known Rebecca since she was about four years old, so he doesn’t have any trouble talking to her, which is why she adores him and always has.

There are a few reasons he hasn’t actively tried putting them together yet. For one thing, Rebecca’s only seventeen. At twenty-two, Steve’s not too old for her, but seventeen still seems a little young. Then there’s the religion thing; Aunt Syd would lose her mind if another girl in the family married out, especially since it didn’t work out so well the first time. He’s also not entirely sure Rebecca is Steve’s type and it’s not the kind of thing you can ask a guy about your own sister expecting to get an honest answer. She’s not ugly or anything, in fact, Bucky thinks she’s pretty, with their mother’s hair, ink-black and poker straight, which Bucky would’ve infinitely preferred inheriting over the dark brown waves he has to plaster back with pomade to get looking right. Like Bucky, she got Jimmy’s slate-blue eyes that show up gray and startling against their olive skin, as opposed to their father’s Irish pink-and-white. So, she’s pretty, but Bucky has to admit that she doesn’t make much of a splash, probably because she’s kind of quiet and reserved. Plus she’s small and thin, hasn’t got much of a figure, and Steve likes firecrackers with great tits, bright red lipstick, and stems that go on for days.

Of course, all this daydreaming is kind of pointless since war’s broken out for real. Nobody knows what will happen now.

***

On fight days, Jimmy lets him do whatever the hell he wants, because they always tell you very seriously to “just _try_ and take it easy before the fight, okay" like relaxation is the holy grail and you have to work real hard to find it. The only thing he’s not supposed to do is make time with a dame, which probably wouldn’t be practical anyway. That’s the reason he doesn’t do it, though, not because getting laid keeps you from fighting angry, for christ’s sake. He’s seriously been warned about this by more than one person, which Bucky finds almost unbelievable. They want you to be pissed off, which, okay, sure. But, come on, they’re talking about boxing—a sport that mostly consists of getting punched in the face—and thinking it’s hard to get angry? Doesn’t getting punched make everyone angry? One solid hit to the jaw’s enough to get Bucky plenty pissed off. What the hell does getting lucky the night before have to do with it?

Getting punched in the gut hurts, sure, but getting punched in the face is something else again, especially the first time in a bout. For Bucky, everything suddenly narrows when the punch hits. He can’t really describe it, but it cuts across him somehow, a bright white line in front of his eyes, sharp and paper-thin. It just feels like something went very wrong somewhere, like the world’s been shaken and everything’s landed upside down. He heard a guy who visited California describe an earthquake one time, and he thinks it might be a little like that, the wrongness. The earth isn’t supposed to move beneath your feet and people probably aren’t supposed to hit each other in the face for no real reason.

Every fighter has to have his crazy-ass way of dealing with it, because normal people just don’t do this. A lot of guys snarl. Some just go away for a split second and there’s this moment where their face goes still. It’s kind of creepy, actually, like nothing’s there behind their eyes. Bucky always ends up laughing. He doesn’t do it on purpose, it just happens. It’s scary enough, though, which is lucky, he guesses. The one and only time he let Rebecca come see him fight, he saw her face afterwards. He has a pretty good idea what he looks like. He should appreciate its intimidation factor more, actually, because he’s not sure he could stop, even if it looked dumb as shit.

So, anyway, Bucky has a routine: he sleeps as much as he can in the morning, he gets up, he eats a gigantic breakfast, and then goes for a walk just to get some fresh air and move around a little bit. (One of the reasons Bucky likes fight days so much is that he gets to not run, which Jimmy insists on every other goddamn day, and is possibly the most boring use of time ever discovered by man.) To get back on schedule, he probably ought to nap, but he feels so restless he’s not sure he can get back to sleep. He decides he’ll curl up with a book for a while. If he falls asleep, that’ll be great, and if not, well, _Swords of Mars_ is as good a way to relax as any, especially since he’s already read it a few times.

***

Bucky has picked this fight to try out some new things he’s been working on, mainly because he doesn’t expect Mushy Robertson to be much of a problem. He’s seen the guy around and he really hasn’t been impressed. For one thing, Mushy Robertson is actually Moses Rabinowitz. Okay, so, Robertson probably plays better on the circuit in Delaware and in fucking Jersey and it’s not like Bucky’s got a six-pointed star on his trunks like Max Baer or anything, but he likes to think if he had his mother’s name, he wouldn’t be so chicken-shit about it. For another thing, Mushy hails from Newark and Bucky doesn’t even have to look at him twice to know what type of jerk he was in high school, what his girlfriend looks like—if he has one—and what kind of house he and his wife will live in after he’s quit the fight game and moved on to the family dry-cleaning business or whatever. 

For the first few rounds, it even goes as planned.

The thing is, Jimmy is not a fan of Bucky’s new style, to say the least, and when your corner-man’s not happy with you, it’s not great, and if he’s your dad on top of that, well, that doesn’t help matters. Bucky doesn’t particularly give a shit though. He’s the one taking punches in the ring, so he figures he can do what he wants.

There’re two ways you can go with the fight game: you can be a boxer or you can be a fighter. People mostly go wild for fighters because they punch like crazy, and if they win, they generally do it with the knockout, it almost never goes to a decision. Since Bucky has no problem keeping the hits coming fast and hard when he has to, Jimmy thinks he should just do his best to make fights brutal and short, and unlike his advice on literally anything else, Jimmy’s boxing advice is usually sound.

Besides boxers are only ever really loved by aficionados, the ones who expect technique to be part of the fight, god forbid, instead of just whaling on each other like it’s a bar fight. Most folks, though, they find technique boring as hell to watch. And it’s not like Bucky _doesn’t_ like playing to the crowd, because of course he does. (He could cross over into movies, even, he thinks sometimes, if he really made it to the big time, which would be fucking hilarious. Steve would die laughing, that was for sure, and he’d probably hate California anyway. Bucky, on the other hand, definitely wouldn’t mind Hollywood, no, he definitely would not mind it one little bit. And maybe the weather would be good for Steve. They could give it a try at least.)

But. Darting in and out, landing jabs and straights and then getting the hell out before the other guy can hit back? It’s almost like dancing and the list of things that Bucky prefers over dancing is pretty damn short. So, he’s going to keep working on it, even if Jimmy fucking whips him across the face with a towel between rounds, which probably isn’t something he would really do.

For a boxer, Mushy is pretty much god’s gift. The punches do certainly keep on coming and if they hit him full on, he’d be in trouble, but they’re wide and slow, so when Mushy throws the straight right, it’s almost comically easy to lightly tap it down and out of the way. A little later in the match, and he’d try to throw a hook here, but that’s a difficult one to get just right coming off of the down parry, so he throws the jab instead to counterpunch. (Actually the jab might be Bucky’s favorite punch: he loves how he’s got to hang nice and loose, making sure to tighten his fist only when he snaps it. He loves the way it’s a heartbeat-quick motion, out and back, before they know what hit them.)

So that’s how it pretty much how it goes for the beginning rounds. He chisels away at Mushy with jabs and straights, dancing around picking up points, and Bucky can read this kid like a fucking book, so defense is a cakewalk.

Of course Jimmy is pissed anyway, and Bucky lets his mind go blank and his eyes wander so he doesn’t have to pay attention to the lecture he keeps getting repeated at him between rounds, and that’s when he sees Matty ringside, which is fine, and next to him is Steve, which is the complete and total opposite of fine.

Bucky can’t go over there because of course he can’t, he’s in the middle of a fight, and he can’t even fucking yell, because he can’t talk, because he’s in the middle of a goddamn fucking fight, for christ’s sake, and how the hell is Steve _here_?

The next few rounds are a shit-show. He lands his punches, but they don’t have any power behind them, they’re fucking fleabites. Bucky might as well be kissing him. He also stops being able to feint for shit so now Mushy can read him like a book, too, which is just fucking dandy. And then, he tries a shoulder roll to get away from Mushy’s killer left cross, completely forgets that the angle coming from a southpaw is totally different, and leaves himself wide open. The punch explodes in his face and suddenly he’s just down.

He’s up before the count, though, and okay, _now_ he’s fucking pissed.

The fight lasts forty-eight seconds after that and Bucky doesn’t remember any of it until he sees that Mushy’s down and staying down, and he can feel the ref holding his arm up, “the winner,” and there’s blood still streaming from his split lip.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Bucky encounters his first Black Widow and is completely out of his league.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \--  
> content note: Bucky has his first adventures in kink here with a wee, tiny bit of very mild knifeplay (so mild, i'm hesitant to even tag it) at the very end of the chapter. beware, here there be a little Bucky/Dottie, but if you're worried about the endgame for Bucky & Steve, please note the pairing in the relationship tags. :D  
> \--  
> thank you so much for reading. i treasure every comment, kudos, bookmark and subscription and gloat over them in the manner of a dragon with a precious, precious hoard. if you have any interest in flailing with me about this fic, other fic, headcanons, BUCKY BARNES, anything Captain America, or honestly anything MCU or Marvel-on-Netflix related, please come find me on tumblr @[superkalifragilistic](http://superkalifragilistic.tumblr.com/) or you know, say hi in the comments :)

When Bucky comes out onto Nagle Avenue in his street clothes, Matt’s waiting for him way past the crowd like he always does if he comes to watch, and of course Steve is standing there next to him. It doesn’t seem to occur to Steve that his being there might’ve thrown Bucky off his game, because he’s not apologetic at all. 

“Steve,” he says, trying not to let on how unsettled he feels. “What the hell are you doing here?” He’s afraid it comes out pissed off, and sure enough, those two vertical lines start to crease between Steve’s brows. Great. 

“Ran into Matt at the drugstore. He told me where he was headed, so I said I’d come along. Why? There a problem?”

“Problem?” Bucky says, aiming for casual and pretty sure he’s hitting defensive instead. “No, I just meant—I didn’t know you wanted to come, that’s all. Don’t you have your art class on Friday nights?”

Steve looks at him skeptically. “Sure, we could talk about the same old class I’ve been going to for the last three months, or, crazy idea, how about we focus on the way you wiped the floor with Robertson just now.”

Bucky shrugs as Matt says, “Yeah, after he fucked around for ten million years first. Dad’s gonna—”

“Watch your language around people, kid,” Bucky advises, cutting him off before he can continue this line of thought, “or don’t come crying to me when Dad hears you and you’re picking your teeth up off the floor one of these days.”

Matt manages to condense _I can’t believe you even got through that sentence without swearing, you hypocrite_ into one unimpressed look.

Bucky categorically ignores this sibling shorthand like he always does, and says, “Steve, I still don’t understand what happened to your class.”

“This is more important,” Steve says, like he’s telling Bucky something so obvious he can’t believe he needs to say it out loud, but of course he will if Bucky really needs him to. “You know, considering.”

“Considering...” Bucky repeats mechanically.

“Well, the war,” Steve explains, clearly somewhat startled by Bucky’s inability to instantly get what he means. “Anything else will have to wait. Not like I was gonna be the next Picasso anyway.”

Bucky can’t keep his teeth from clenching together hard, and he’d forgotten about Mushy’s fist against his jaw until just now. “You should have told me you wanted to come,” he says, knowing he sounds ridiculous, unable to stop himself.

Steve ignores his tone. “Thought I’d surprise you. Now that you got me started, figured I better come watch a real pro at work. Can’t say I saw one, though,” he adds with a grin, “you got any idea where I should look?”

Steve’s face is excited, almost admiring, but Bucky must be reading him wrong, because let’s face it, Steve can’t really be getting stars in his eyes over Bucky losing his shit on Mushy Robertson, whose only crime was getting in a decent hit over Bucky’s guard. Only someone like Jimmy would appreciate something like that.

Bucky can’t figure it out.

And then he realizes: Steve’s probably just thrilled to get a little peek behind the scenes. The whole thing must seem a little glamorous, now that Bucky thinks about it, and he should’ve been sharing it with Steve this whole time.

He just never thought Steve would like it.

Real life never matches up to the way you imagine things in your head, but still, this is all catching him wrong-footed, the way he’s so taken aback by this moment . He’s half-angry with Steve, for ruining things, for enjoying himself, for barging in, but no, that’s not fair, is it.

If Bucky didn’t want him here, he should’ve told him. He can’t expect Steve to know things if he can’t be man enough to say them out loud. Steve doesn’t watch every flicker of Bucky’s eyes like a hunter stalking prey, hasn’t memorized every quirk of Bucky’s mouth, doesn’t constantly catalogue Bucky’s every reaction, isn’t always painstakingly constructing plans to recall the ones he likes.

Steve’s not completely fucked up. Not like him.

“You were great, Buck,” Steve reassures him, which Bucky finds maddening, because does Steve really think he’s upset by the same exact shit they’ve been slinging at each other since they were kids? Does Bucky really come off that pathetic? “Little slow in the middle, but you sure gave him a licking there at the end.”

Bucky laughs uncomfortably. “Gotta take Jimmy’s advice sometime, I guess,” he says, just to be saying something and forgetting that he doesn’t call their father that in front of Matt, ever. Fuck. This night just keeps getting better.

“You buying us dinner or what?” Matt says, clearly more interested in food than anything else, and ordinarily, Bucky would leap at the opportunity to take Steve out and feed him up. But he just can’t seem to get it together.

“Yeah,” Bucky says, finally, “yeah, I guess I—,” but then he trails off because he sees Tommy Reilly’s secretary walking up towards them, strawberry blonde and an answer to prayer.

“Hey there, fellas,” she says, then adds, a little softer, “that was a good fight, Bucky.” Her voice is smooth like ice cream and it sends shivers up and down Bucky’s spine. He doesn’t even need to glance at Steve to tell he’s impressed, and suddenly Bucky’s just had enough. Of this day, of this conversation, whatever, he is done with all of it and he wants out.

“Dottie,” he greets her, smiling wide. “If I’d known you were here, you sure wouldn’t have had to come looking for me.”

“Who says I’m looking for you? Maybe I just want you to introduce me,” she says, her voice all light and sweet. She nods at the other two and Bucky feels like he’s watching all of this from somewhere very far away.

“Right, sure, of course. Fellas, this is Dottie Overton, and Dot, this is my little brother, Matt, you might have seen him around, and this is my buddy, Steve Rogers.”

“It’s Delores, actually,” she confides to Steve after they greet her politely. “Only Bucky calls me Dottie. He says he just likes it better, but I think maybe he never quite caught ‘Delores’ so he just picked the first nickname he thought of that started with ‘D’. Isn’t that right, Bucky?”

“Aw, sugar, you know that’s not true. I just can’t call you Delores because I actually like you,” Bucky says. “Remember that terrifying teacher you had for English that one year, Steve?”

Steve shrugs. “Yeah, sure. Kinda hard to forget the lady who liked to hit your desk with her baseball bat when she thought you weren’t paying attention.”

“Exactly,” Bucky says, triumphant. “And her name was Delores, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah, I don’t know,” Steve says, giving Bucky one of his shit-eating grins, the bastard. “I think you got it mixed up with Florence.”

Bucky shoots Steve a dirty look, and then turns to his brother, saying plaintively, “C’mon, Matty, help a guy out.”

“Long before my time, old man,” Matt says, looking smug.

“You wouldn’t have met her anyway, Matt, ‘cause after Buck locked her in the supply closet, she had a stroke and died,” Steve reminds him helpfully (and totally unnecessarily, in Bucky’s opinion).

“Which is why you never had to suffer through her, Matty, so how ‘bout a little gratitude, huh?” Bucky interjects, trying to save a little face, but knowing it’s a lost cause.

Dottie laughs. “I don’t believe it! You killed your teacher, Bucky?”

“Look, it’s not like she had the stroke in the closet! Besides, she should’ve been in prison. She could’ve killed a kid with that bat. It wasn’t like she had the best aim with those coke-bottle glasses. It was self-defense.”

“More like Steve-defense,” Matt mumbles, and jesus, sometimes Bucky regrets not drowning the kid at birth. He watches helplessly as Steve stiffens up and his mouth draws into a tight line. Bucky scrambles for something, anything, to say that’ll smooth things over, but for what feels like the first time in his life, he just keeps coming up empty.

Dottie hums thoughtfully, and breaks into the increasingly awkward silence. “I guess all I meant to say was, I think it’s pretty rich, being rechristened by someone who goes by _Bucky_.”

This manages to surprise a laugh out of Steve (who probably thinks no one besides him gives Bucky this much shit) and all he can think of to say in return is, “Listen, doll, you let me take you out tonight, you can call me anything you want, what do you say?”

It’s not good. But a tiny pleased smile tugs at the corner of her mouth, and he knows he’s in, regardless.

Christ, all he’d really been trying to do was get as far away as possible from his best friend and his little brother, after a fight he _won_ , for god’s sake, why is everything so fucked. But when she tucks her arm through his, it feels kind of like getting a present for no reason on earth except that someone wants to put a little sunshine into your day.

She really seals the deal when she looks back at Steve before they take off and says, “Maybe I’ll see you again sometime. I’ve got a friend you might like.”

Steve treats her to one of his real smiles—the one that breaks over his face like a sunrise—because apparently being talked to like an actual person with human feelings still comes as a happy surprise to him. Bucky doesn’t get to see this expression around dames much—the tense half-smile that Steve pulls out when he thinks he’s being mocked isn’t really in the same class at all.

Yeah, he might really like Dottie a whole lot.

***

He’s pretty sure Steve’s a virgin, still.

It’s not that Bucky’s never set him up with a girl who’s a sure thing (because they haven’t “ _all been terrible, Buck,”_ no matter what Steve likes to claim when he’s being bitchy). He’s personally witnessed at least three occasions when Steve could have closed the deal if he’d wanted to, and it stands to reason that there must’ve been other times when Bucky wasn’t around to see it.

He doesn’t know why exactly, but he hasn’t asked Steve straight out, yes or no. Steve would probably tell him, but somehow Bucky doesn’t want to come right out and ask, especially since Steve’s not the type to screw and tell. Sometimes, when they’ve had a few, he brags a little about his own exploits, leaving plenty of space for Steve to tell a few war stories of his own, but he never does. Although, that might not prove anything, since details aren’t exactly Steve’s bag, anyway.

(When Bucky was fifteen, spending two horrible, endless months with his family at the Jersey shore, he’d always get so excited when a letter from Steve arrived to break up the miserable monotony. They’d be these thick envelopes, too, and he would open them expectantly... only to see that in response to Bucky’s seven or eight pages of closely-scrawled anecdotes, jokes, and innermost thoughts, Steve had inevitably written something like: _Dear Bucky, Thanks for your letter. I really liked it. Probably because nothing much is happening here so even a letter from your dumb ass is better than nothing. Can’t really think what else to say, so here’s a comic I drew. Hope it makes you laugh anyway. Your pal, Steve_. Then it would be a real effort not to bang his head against a wall very slowly until he was dead. Only one good thing happened that summer, which was that Bucky lost his own cherry to a girl two years older under the pier one sweaty, sandy, memorable night, and it really says something that this only partially redeems the whole experience in Bucky’s eyes.) 

Anyway, the point is that if Steve is a virgin, it’s by choice. The thing that Bucky would really like to know is this: is it because he’s saving it for marriage (totally possible) or is it that he just hasn’t liked any of the girls he’s met so far? Because if it’s the first, probably he should stop trying to get Steve laid. And if it’s the second, well, then Bucky’s making an awful hash of it.

It’s possible he’s not trying as hard as he could be.

***

“Steve,” Bucky says, pretending his tie needs straightening, so he can look at the cracked square of glass that Steve uses to shave with instead of directly at Steve.

“What.” He sounds slightly belligerent, but Bucky knows he’s nervous. Steve’s always nervous before dates.

Bucky realizes he’s managed to completely unknot his tie by mistake, so now he’s got to retie the thing. “You really like boxing?” They’ve had nine sessions now and Steve’s enthusiasm is still sky-high, even when he’s so tired Bucky can tell it’s agony for him to lift his arm up one more time.

“Sure,” Steve says, like he doesn’t even need to think about it. “What’s not to like?”

Bucky can’t help laughing. “Yeah,” he says, feeling incredulous and amused all at once. “You said it, pal.” He lets his eyes meet Steve’s in the mirror and sees that he’s smiling. It looks good on him.

Steve tilts his head quizzically at him. “Does it seem like I don’t like it?”

Bucky shrugs. “You never did before.”

“Sure I did.”

“You never came to see me fight before,” Bucky says. They haven’t actually talked about it and Bucky’s not sure why he started this conversation right before they’re about to go out. God, he’s dumb.

“I didn’t think you cared,” Steve says, puzzled.

“I don’t,” Bucky says quickly. “But how come, though?”

Steve looks at his reflection like he can’t believe how stupid Bucky is being (which he has to admit might be fair). “What, you think your dad wants me around when you’re fighting? He can barely stand me the rest of the time.”

“What the hell?” Bucky has to turn around and look at Steve. This is so fucked he doesn’t even know where to begin. “I—you never said. This whole time, did you want—I mean, how could you think,” he stops, takes a deep breath, starts over. “Christ, Steve, who gives a shit what Jimmy wants anyway?”

“Unbelievable,” Steve says, actually laughing at him. “You can finish a sentence. Who knew?”

“Fuck you,” Bucky says and feels a wave of intense fondness swell over him. “Seriously though—”

“It’s not for him, dumbass.” Steve looks at him affectionately. “I don’t want to make things harder on you.”

“Things aren’t hard on me,” Bucky protests. And they aren’t. He’s probably the luckiest son of a bitch he’s ever met. Steve sure as hell isn’t going to waste his precious energy worrying about making Bucky’s life any easier.

Steve rolls his eyes. “Right,” he says. “Sorry for giving a shit. Won’t happen again.”

“You better make sure it doesn’t,” Bucky orders flatly, only sort of joking.  Steve nods, almost like he’s agreeing and, wait, what the fuck just happened? Bucky feels a thrill wrap around his spine, his bones, and somehow he’s tingling all the way down to his toes. “Did you just nod at me? You’re actually gonna do what I say?”

Steve shrugs and says, “You’re right, so.”

“I think my ears must be going,” Bucky says. “Did you just say, ‘you’re right’? Do you have a calendar handy? I’d like to mark down the date.”

Steve shoves him playfully. “I knew it wouldn’t bother you if I came. Not anymore. That’s why I decided to go when I ran into Matt.”

“Yeah?”

“Come on, you really gonna make me spell it out? I know you get it.”

Bucky honestly doesn’t, so he keeps looking intently at Steve, waiting for him to answer. Steve never holds out on him long when he does that.

“You just want to make me sound like a magazine ad, don’t you?” Steve says with a grimace, before indulging Bucky like always and giving in. “What's happening now... well, it puts things in perspective. There's just a hell of a lot more important things going on than your dad being a jerk. Or art class, for that matter.”

Bucky bristles at that. “For shit’s sake, Steve, you know you shouldn’t have quit that class. I’ll never understand why you always have to—”

“People are dying, Buck." 

He feels his mouth twist bitterly. “People are always dying.”

“This is different.”

“I don’t see how. What difference does it make if it’s a Japanese bullet or you get run over by a taxi cab?” Or die from pneumonia, or tuberculosis, or when your heart just fucking stops because you’ve been putting too much pressure on it for years, Bucky wants to add. “Hell, it’s not like the war started last week, Steve. People have been dying out there for a while already, or didn’t you notice.”

“It’s different because now we can do something about it.” Steve is so certain, so sure that Bucky can’t bring himself to argue. He doesn’t understand how Steve can be so positive about everything. How can one person can be so strong, so brave, so _much_ trapped in a body and a world that betrays him every fucking day? How the hell does he do it? Bucky will never know the answer and he’ll never stop being awed at the result.

He laughs at Steve so he doesn’t do something stupid like say any of this out loud. “Yeah, I’m sure they’re just waiting for the two of us to get over there to kick old Adolf’s ass. That’s what the allies really need, two punks from Brooklyn, who’ve never held a gun in their entire lives.”

“Maybe they are,” Steve says. He smiles and before Bucky can stop himself, he thinks: _beautiful_. “Maybe they do.”

***

Thinking back, he doesn’t know why he was so sure that Steve thought boxing was fine for Bucky if he liked it, but basically uninteresting on its own. He was so certain about it, though, that he’s finding it hard to accept that Steve’s telling the truth, even though Bucky can see for himself that he is. Maybe it’s that they never really fought each other when they were kids. They got into it plenty with other guys, Steve because he was always trying to stand up to or for someone and Bucky, either because he got angry (which happened even easier back then) or because he was hanging around with Steve. But they’ve never really used their fists on each other.

It’s not that they never piss each other off, because of course they do. Not that often, but when it happens, it’s usually pretty lethal. Bucky wouldn’t roughhouse with Steve after the rheumatic fever, so they got in the habit of fighting the way Bucky imagines girls usually do, just as mean, but without the violence. If Steve’s scathing disapproval could be weaponized, Bucky thinks they’d probably have won the war already and when Bucky’s angry with Steve, he aims purposefully and viciously at Steve’s weak spots, which he can usually hit with pinpoint accuracy because he’s been watching Steve like it’s his job for since he was eleven years old. He regrets it later, always, but he does it anyway if he’s angry enough.

***

Everything Bucky knows about military theory—which is not that much—he’s learned from hanging out in Steve’s apartment, because Steve has an ever-growing collection of second hand books by people like Sun Tzu and T.E. Lawrence and Carl von Clausewitz. He never reads a novel unless Bucky insists he has to, which Bucky will never, ever understand, especially since he devours this dry-as-dust stuff avidly and tells Bucky about it in great and frankly overwhelming detail.

Bucky finds it all incredibly slow going, to be completely honest, but he’ll flip through them when he’s got nothing else to do at Steve’s place (apparently to Steve, growing up means no longer keeping interesting books in the house). Anyway, the point is, there’s this one guy, von Moltke, or something like that, who said no plan ever survives contact with the enemy. Well, it wasn’t that well phrased, but that was the gist.

He’s never planned an invasion or a tactical assault and he probably never will, but Bucky finds it useful to remind himself of this notion from time to time, especially when he’s got a date.

Bucky loves dates and everything about them: he loves the part where you try to figure out what they’d most like to do and how you could give that to them, he loves the part where if he does it right, he gets to watch them get that smile they couldn’t stop if they wanted to, gets to hear that little pleased hitch in their breath, gets to see those slightly widened eyes and parted lips and to know he made it all happen for them. It feels like magic, honestly.

He’s cynical about a lot of things in life, but not about dates.

He can barely get Steve to tolerate them and it drives him crazy, because there’s this whole wide world of fun he could be having, and Bucky knows, he just _knows_ Steve would love it, too. If he would just let go of the stick up his ass, he would love dancing and the way your body can move against your partner’s; he would love riding the Staten Island ferry both ways, especially if he could sketch the seagulls that bob and dip around you in the wind; he would love burning his mouth on pizza at one of the Italian places in the city, with those rough, heavy linens on the tiny tables, where the wine could strip paint and is objectively terrible, but with the right person tastes out of this world.

Steve makes double dates a lot more challenging then they have to be, Bucky thinks. They’re always going to be a little awkward, because it’s harder to please two sets of people rather than just one, but Steve can really take it to another level sometimes. It’s true that most of their double dates—well, most of Steve’s dates, period—are set-ups, which Bucky understands can be a little terrifying since it means you’re always trying real hard to impress and Steve obviously knows how terrible he is at talking himself up.

Still, Bucky thinks he could make more of an effort.

Bucky spent a lot of time thinking up this particular date actually, so he starts out with high hopes that things will work out. It’s Saturday afternoon and they’re going to meet Dottie and her friend at the Whitney in the city, and then they’ll see where the night takes them after that. The museum’s in the Village, and apparently Dottie’s friend is from the Middle West, so Bucky figures she might get at least a little thrill being in one of the iffier parts of town, while simultaneously absorbing some art and culture. Steve always likes museums—Bucky would never have known how great they were to take girls to if it weren’t for Steve—and Dottie seems to enjoy almost anything.

So it’s sad when they discover that while Dottie’s friend Lorna is short, stacked and delectably round all over, with rose-pink lips that Bucky would like very much to lick, she is also really fucking shy. Of course Steve has literally no idea what to do to bring someone out of their shell; in fact, he doesn’t even try, probably because he thinks she’s standoffish and doesn’t like him. It would all be so much easier if he could communicate any of this to Steve, but he can’t think how when they’re in front of people.

Things really start going wrong for him as soon as they enter the museum, because the first painting they see is apparently the most famous piece in the place and is therefore hanging in prime viewing position over the grand staircase where it is literally impossible to ignore. This painting is unfortunately _Dempsey on the Ropes_ , because that’s the way things are going for Bucky these days. The girls look at him expectantly like he’s supposed to say something particularly interesting or personal about this picture of Jack Dempsey, world champion, falling ass over teakettle, out of the ring and into the crowd, during a fight that consisted of only two rounds, generally supposed to be the two most savage rounds in boxing history, a fight people still talk about almost twenty years later, a fight that after the crowd pushed him back into the ring against the rules, Dempsey went on to win.

He looks at Steve for inspiration. “Steve, you have any idea there was a market for this kind of thing? I sure didn’t. Maybe you should come paint my next fight, huh? What do you think, ladies?”

They both smile and he wills Steve to play along, but instead he snaps, “Sure. I'll get right on it next time you’re fighting a world champion.”

“Admit it, I’d make a better model than Firpo,” Bucky says in desperation. “And I’m a nicer guy than Dempsey ever was, too, so there’s that.”

“That’s for sure,” Steve says. “Hard to think all that much of a guy who’s that good and wastes his talent fighting in bars instead of for his country.”

“Oh, come on, Steve,” Bucky says, frustrated. “That’s ridiculous.”

“You know I’m right,” says Steve.

“What, if you’re a boxer, you have to sign up to be killed no matter what you think about it?”

“No,” he says, “but being a star doesn’t excuse you from doing what’s right, either.”

If he answers Steve the way he's tempted to, he’s definitely going to regret it, so he grins lazily instead. “Well, I sure hope I get to find out from personal experience someday,” he says as carelessly as he can and puts his hand on Dottie’s back to guide her gently up the stairs.

***

It’s a real surprise to Bucky when Dottie invites him upstairs for the first time after they drop Lorna at her boarding house and Steve at the subway, since Bucky never really recovers from the painting episode. Plus, although he’s grateful that Dottie kept the conversation going, she could only do so much. He knows he didn’t do his part, and he feels like an asshole for not at least paying Lorna some sincere compliments that might have made her giggle and blush a little and maybe could have made up a little bit for setting her up with a guy who barely spoke two words to her all night.

“Apologize to Lorna for me when you see her again, will you, doll?” he says ruefully as Dottie bustles around making Nescafe and pouring a slug of bourbon in it. “I thought she’d have a better time.”

Dottie’s got a furnished room with a hot plate and a private bath. She keeps it amazingly neat and it’s kind of bare and utilitarian, which is somehow not quite what he was expecting.

“Oh well,” she says, “they can’t all work out, can they? I thought Steve would like her, but she wasn’t his type, I guess.”

“If that’s true, Steve’s an idiot,” Bucky says sharply.

He sits down on the single bed, which has rails on three sides and obviously doubles as a couch. He twines his fingers around the rails aimlessly and then stops, because something metal is laced over one of them and has fallen down past the edge. He reaches down to pull it up and then stares at it, bewildered.

It’s a pair of handcuffs.

He glances up from them to see Dottie looking at him and her face has gone utterly expressionless. Bucky can’t explain why, but the back of his neck prickles and all of a sudden the air stills around them and everything feels dangerous, like something terrible is about to happen. He's obviously imagining things, though, because next thing he knows, she comes out of shock or something, and a pink blush slowly suffuses her face. He watches, fascinated and he’s pretty sure it goes all the way down. She looks lost and vulnerable and he'd never have imagined cool-and-composed Dottie could look like that before this minute. He’s completely mesmerized.

She bites her lip. “It’s kind of hard to explain,” she says, eventually, her voice sounding a little broken for once, instead of smooth, and it’s like the sound goes straight to his dick.

“You don’t owe me any explanations,” Bucky says.

“No,” she says, “but I want to—I mean. It’s what I like.”

“In bed,” says Bucky evenly, just to make sure they’re on the same page. “It’s what you like in bed.”

She nods. “Have you ever—”

He’s not sure what to say here, so he goes with the truth. “No,” he says, “but I’d sure love to try. If you want me to.”

Cuffing Dottie’s wrists to the bed is like nothing he’s ever felt before. It goes to his head more than whiskey, it’s insane.

He cuts her dress off with his pocketknife, slicing it down between her breasts, over her belly, and then carefully between her legs, as she gasps and stays very still. He parts the fabric to reveal her brassiere, and she can’t hide from him at all, she has to stay just where he put her. She trembles and shivers when he lightly runs his hands over her garters, when he puts his mouth on her nipples, but it’s when he uses his teeth and when his hands leave bruises on her skin that she moans and cries out. He pulls her panties aside impatiently, wraps a hand around her throat as he slides into her. He doesn't try to be gentle, and he curses when he feels her tighten fiercely around him through the rubber.

His bones feel molten inside him and when he finally comes, he has to squeeze his eyes shut, because there's a massive sunburst in his head and in what feels like every cell of his body.

He collapses on top of her afterwards, sweaty and panting, feeling like his heart might explode, and he realizes that for the last little while, he hasn’t thought about the war at all.

It feels fucking great.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here is George Bellows's [Dempsey and Firpo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Dempsey_vs._Luis_%C3%81ngel_Firpo#/media/File:Bellows_George_Dempsey_and_Firpo_1924.jpg) which our boys would have known as _Dempsey on the Ropes_. It's been on display at the Whitney Museum of American Art since it opened in the village and is now back downtown on Gansevoort Street after a long stint on Museum Mile on the upper east side. 
> 
> Those of you who watch _Agent Carter_ will remember Dottie and her handcuffs from episode 1x05, but for those of you who don't, rest assured I did not make up this habit of hers. Marvel: bringing the kink for all of us!  <3
> 
> Next chapter, Bucky makes a [new friend](http://comicvine.gamespot.com/isaiah-bradley/4005-40607/)...


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky meets another future Captain America.

"You know," Bucky says, "next time I get you a date maybe you could stand to be a little bit nicer about it, huh?"

It's been less than a minute since they got started, but this is the time of year that Steve always, always gets sick. Bucky'd tried to suggest they give it a rest for today and Steve had looked at him like he pulled his dick out on the street in front of a lady or something. His arms are slowing down, Bucky observes, punches already starting to get sloppy and ragged. Steve definitely shouldn't be doing this right now, he needs a break at the very least, but Steve just won't fucking ask for one. Bucky's going to have to be the voice of reason, the one to give in. And he will. Like always, which is funny because it sure doesn't come naturally. He knows he's got to do it though because what the hell, Steve's just going to keep his mouth shut, going to suffer for pride or whatever. In front of Bucky like he's some kind of stranger Steve has to impress.

Bucky does not tell him to stop. Will a fucking drill sergeant? He will not. He feels mean and angry, wonders briefly if this is how Jimmy feels all the fucking time.

Steve grimaces, tries to put more force behind his fist. If he was sparring instead of shadow boxing, he'd be a pancake right now. "Sure, Buck," he says, panting gasp for air and increasingly formless punch punctuating each syllable, "I'll try to act more grateful. Next time."

"Don't think there's gonna be a next time. Not with her anyway."

"I got better things to think about than trying to impress some dame."

"Like what? The war?" Steve doesn't bother replying. Saving his energy, christ, maybe he does have an ounce of self preservation somewhere in there. Buried deep. Real fucking deep. "Yeah, well, you sure made me look great in front of Dot."

"Didn't see her ditch you," Steve says as venomously as a guy can without oxygen.

"Sure," Bucky allows. "Got lucky, even. And hey, I bet you made that poor girl feel real good too. She probably went home and thought, I sure can hold a guy's attention, I must really be something."

Bucky wants to make him keep going, he really does. For one thing by this point in Steve's lessons, the very first minute after you glove up should be achievable, hell, easy even. But he's starting to realize that force of will can only get you so far. He has to stop this right now because he actually wants to hurt Steve, wants to punish him until he has to sit his stubborn ass down and just give himself a break for once, let himself off the hook, just one time, give himself a rest from living by the Holy Word According To Steve Rogers, chapter and verse, every single second of every goddamn day. And while he's at it, he could afford to cut the entire rest of the world, Bucky included, some slack too. But no, it's Steve.

It's messed up to make him keep going, to let him hurt himself trying to live up to some impossible standard, it's so messed up, but Bucky wants to, god, it's so fucking tempting. "You definitely were just as sweet to her as she deserved. Don't you think? Or is that against your religion or something, okay, you're done for now, stop goddamnit, it's been three minutes." It's maybe been two and a half, if he's generous, which rounds up to three. Not even a lie, really.

"What," Steve wheezes angrily, as he staggers a little, tries and fails to catch his breath, "thinking? No, that's just fine with God. Made us that way and everything. Actually I assumed stupidity just came free wherever you picked up all your atheist bullshit."

They're going to have a real fight in a minute. It's the last thing Bucky wants to do right now, but he can feel it gathering, and he can feel himself start to think, ah, fuck it, when Steve says, "Sorry, Buck. I'm sorry. You really like her, huh?"

It doesn't feel like there's a right answer to this question. He has only ever been able to like one person the way Steve means it. It's not Dottie. It's never going to be Dottie. Or anyone else probably. But... he really does want to spend more time with her, wants to figure out how she works, hell, he wants to figure out how he works, this strange new fucked up thing he's discovered inside himself, a click like when a dislocated joint falls back into place. "Yeah," he says finally, "I guess... I do."

Steve makes an aborted gesture with his hand and looks like he bit into a lemon by mistake. Bucky can tell he wants to place a comforting hand on his shoulder, wants to grip Bucky by the neck, maybe give him a friendly shake. It's the only way Steve knows how to say _hey, I'm here, you're going to be okay_ because it's the exact same way Bucky always tries to say it to him. He tried to do it then realized he still had gloves on.

Bucky feels such an overwhelming swell of love for Steve that he's genuinely afraid he might start to cry, god, his eyes are actually starting to sting.

"That's rough, pal," Steve settles for instead.

"Yeah, well, things are rough all over aren't they. Don't worry about it." Steve just gives him a look that says _you've gotta be kidding me._ Bucky smiles at him fondly. "Don't think you really hurt my chances anyway."

Steve rolls his eyes. "Whatever, look, let me buy you a beer tonight, okay?"

"No," Bucky says impulsively, "you don't have anything going on today, right? Buy me breakfast now and then hang out here. I gotta work, new kid's coming around, might make a good sparring partner. But you could watch, maybe pick up a few pointers, what do you say?"

"Yeah," says Steve, a real smile ghosting around his mouth. "I guess I could do that."

\---

When Isaiah Bradley shows up, Bucky regrets everything in his life that brought him to this moment. He's only seventeen years old, but Isaiah Bradley's presence hits you like a slap on the face and he commands the room as soon as he enters it. Bucky can tell just by the way he steps, light on his feet, all controlled strength coiled and restrained, that he will be a killer in the ring. Bucky would love to fight him, would love every second of trying to figure out how to take him down, would like to do it every day of the week, and twice on Sundays. Isaiah Bradley is actually honest-to-god beautiful to look at, he's got the same indomitable will blazing out of him that Bucky sees when he looks at Steve, not as much maybe, but then again, Bucky's probably a little biased.

But along with all this, Isaiah Bradley is colored and that is where the story of Isaiah Bradley will end because for some fucking reason he wants to get a job from Jimmy Barnes, biggest asshole this side of the Harlem River.

And Bucky has invited Steve to come and watch, jesus fucking christ.

"You didn't tell me he was colored," Bucky hisses as quietly as he can to Jimmy when he's called over to get his instructions.

"I know, son, but they keep telling me he's hot shit, that we gotta see him in the ring. I figure you whip his ass real good, do some lasting damage, maybe he learns his place, right? I figure you can handle it okay, you can do the job when you feel like it. You know what to do." And yeah Bucky does, he's been fighting a long time, it'd be pretty fucking sad if he didn't know how to intimidate and humiliate by now.

He steps into the ring, the kid nods at him, then stiffens when Bucky doesn't nod back. Bucky can see the very moment where the kid's thinking, _just wait, just wait till you see what I can do to your face motherfucker, let's see how you treat me then._ Bucky really likes him already.

He reaches out and taps the kid's glove with his own and registers his surprise. _Yeah, I'm not quite what you thought either, buddy._

Bucky would like to think that he made the conscious choice to not do what Jimmy said, but actually he's not sure he could have even if he'd wanted to. The kid is something else, fast and hard and keeps Bucky on the hop, guessing constantly. It's the farthest thing from a total shutdown you could get and still win.

Bucky is flushed and sweating and bruised and in pain, and he feels really, really good. He spits out his guard and exclaims jubilantly, "Kid, you're hired. That was great," because even Jimmy knows brilliance when he sees it.

Bradley snarls, "Ain't a kid," and Bucky is reminded so much of Steve it hurts. But then he flashes a gorgeous grin that doesn't remind Bucky of anyone but does send a weird shiver up and down his spine and adds, "Hired part sounds pretty good though."

"Don't know if you forgot," he startles violently-- Jimmy somehow has gotten right behind him without Bucky noticing, "but you don't do the hiring around here, I do. And if you think dancing around like you just did was cute, you got another think coming." And to Isaiah, "you wanted a shot, you got it. Now get lost."

"That's really fucking stupid, Dad, even for you."

"What did you fucking say to me?" Jimmy actually backhands him across the face and the regular noises around the gym begin to quiet down as they all stop what they're doing in favor of the show the Barnes family is putting on for free. Bucky honestly can't believe the words that are coming out of his mouth. Who is this talking, he wonders distantly, because it sure doesn't seem like him. "This kid's really good, you could make something outta him, and after I enlist--"

"After you what?" Jimmy is glaring at him, shoves him hard in the chest. "Don't think I heard you right."

Fuck. It's like someone else (Steve) has taken over his mouth. "You hard of hearing now? After I enlist, because _someone_ has to fight against assholes like you," he repeats louder and more slowly as if he's talking to a child who's both slightly deaf and also stupid, "you're gonna want to replace me and this kid's not even eighteen! He couldn't sign up if he wanted to!"

Jimmy goes to slap him again and Bucky blocks it easily with his forearm before the blow can touch his face.

"Try to hit me one more time," Bucky says quietly. "Go on." Jimmy does nothing and Bucky realizes that's all he can do. Maybe that's all he ever could do.

"You know what," Bucky says, and shoves his father back hard enough that he staggers. "I fucking quit."

Steve has come up to the edge of the ring. He looks like he doesn't know if he wants to run to Bucky or try to punch Jimmy in the face.

Bucky turns his back on his father like he doesn't even exist, says to Isaiah, "Sorry kid, better luck next time, maybe try Saul's in Hell's Kitchen. There's gotta be someone there less dumb than this has-been. I'll take you down there if you want sometime, introduce you around."

The kid looks like he's been hit by a train, which, yeah, who the hell expects this level of melodrama before noon, and mutters something vaguely affirmative.

"Fine," Bucky says, "see you there tomorrow. 48th and Tenth Avenue. Eight o'clock, don't be late." He tosses the kid a smile and then says to Steve, "C'mon, let's get out of here, help me with these gloves."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry to you poor souls who've been waiting since, uh, 2016 for this story to continue. I've been on disability from work and I really thought it was going to be all fic all the time but it turns out writing fic is really hard when sickness is kicking your ass. But here's another (short, sorry) chapter of Bucky Barnes, 1940s pro-boxer (If you want to imagine Isaiah, picture Michael B. Jordan in Creed, but y'know, seventeen.)
> 
> I'll try to have the next chapter up soon -- I have so many more torments to inflict on this poor guy -- stick around, next chapter Bucky moves in with Steve and keeps trying to resist temptation. It goes as well as you might expect. Sorry, Buck. 
> 
> As always thanks for reading and whether you read, subscribed, left kudos, commented or bookmarked, I think you are the awesomest and you make me smile. As always am happy to chat about all things Bucky & Steve in the comments and you can always hit me up on tumblr @ superkalifragilistic


	5. Chapter 5

They've been walking for about three blocks when Steve breaks the silence, saying, "Bucky, where are we going exactly?"

Bucky stops short. He hasn't actually thought this through at all, he's just allowed adrenaline and momentum carry him along but, now... he's quit? He's quit! He's quit his job. He's... he's homeless. He doesn't want to enlist, and now he's said he's going to, loudly, in front of Steve! In fact if you think about it, he's really said it in front of everyone who he has ever given a fuck about and possibly anyone he ever will give a fuck about, because he might die! Except, fuck, Rebecca. And fuck, Matt and Patsy who he used to live with! And now he doesn't anymore. Who are still in school right fucking now because this is a completely normal day of a normal week of a normal year, except no, there's a war on, fuck, and he's quit his job!!! And shit, Jimmy, will he go home now?

Except it's not home, right, right, okay and Steve is saying something, "Bucky, no, it's okay, think about it, he's not going home right now, he can't walk out in front of everyone after you humiliated him in public like that. It'll be fine--"

"Steve," he says, stepping back a little farther, because he was too close, what if Steve pulled him into a hug in this alley, he might cry right here in front of--. "Steve!"

Steve stops trying to soothe him and Bucky says, "How long have I..." god, he really has to ask this, "been talking? Out loud, I mean?"

Steve's face does some sort of complicated grimace, like he's worried Bucky might have a concussion. Does he have a concussion? He might--that would explain a lot, actually, oh, Steve is saying, "Just since, I mean, I wasn't timing it, you were saying, about Rebecca, and Matt--"

Bucky cuts him off, "yeah, okay, got it, good. Thank christ."

There is a pause. Then Steve says, "You know, for an atheist, you thank Christ a hell of a lot."

He laughs. It might be slightly hysterical but he laughs. "I hang out with boxers, buddy, give me a break."

"I hang out with you," Steve points out, "yet somehow I still manage to find words besides christ and fuck."

"Sure, but you're Catholic."

"What do you mean, I'm Catholic? Half the people you box with are Catholic, probably.

"Yeah, but they're Catholic like I'm Jewish. You, I could see how it would get wearing after a few rosaries or whatever."

"You think I still confess every time I swear? Also what the hell, how is my being Catholic even an argument? Like you said, you're Jewish! Jesus shouldn't really come into it for you."

"Look, all I know is I still have to wait the same amount of forever when I pick you up after confession as I did when you were still saying darn and heck. Which was a thing you used to do. Because you're an altar boy, who doesn't swear."

"I just did, you jerk."

Bucky leans against the side of the building, because he feels like he might pass out. Maybe it looks nonchalant, he tries to tell himself. (It definitely doesn't.) "Right, of course, it happens at least three times a year, how could I forget? Also 'thank christ' is a, what do you call it, an idiomatic expression. I'm not praying. Just, you know, profane. And picturesque."

"Which one of us went to art school? I think I get to decide what's picturesque."

"I think you had to go to art school because you couldn't use words to express yourself, punk."

"Speaking of," Steve says casually.  
  
That sneaky little shit. First he distracted him, and then--"No."

"Buck. You paid for me to go to college."

"I _loaned_ you _some_ money so you could pay for a few classes. You made me calculate a rate of interest! You had me sign a paper. In fucking triplicate!"

"So let me pay you back. I'll let you rip all three of them up."

"With what? You got some cash stashed under the floor boards I don't know about?"

Steve's obviously been thinking while they've been walking, unlike Bucky, which is sad, because he's the one who just made a really grand gesture that he has no fucking idea how to back up. "You should move in with me."

Bucky laughs. "And sleep on your couch of dubious origins?"

"Sure, why not? You've done it before."

"I'm usually drunk though. So I don't care how shitty it is." There is a very good reason that he can't move in with Steve, but it's not one Bucky can tell him. It's too bad since it would definitely shut down this idea he's got into his head about Bucky moving in with him, into that tiny little one and a half room apartment, and seeing him all the fucking time, god, it would be so great, but it would be so hard to never say anything or god forbid, do something, and, yeah, no, Bucky has walked out on his family, his job, his fucking life all at once, he can't end his friendship with Steve too! That's asking too much, isn't it? Because Bucky can only deal with so much truth in one day.

"Well, what's your plan? You want to waste your money on a rooming house or something?"

Shit. "What money?"

"I think the five hundred bucks you won the other day should last even you for a while."

"I don't have it." What the hell was he thinking? He wasn't. He didn't make a plan, he always, always has a plan.

"What do you mean, you don't have it? It's five hundred dollars. What did you do, buy a yacht?"

"I just kept twenty for walking around money."

Steve shoves him gently. "Well, I didn't think you had it all in your wallet, Buck. Let's go back to your house--I mean, not your--look, wherever you end up, you're gonna need your stuff. Let's just take it all to my place for now, and then you figure out what's next from there."

Okay, that's true, he does definitely want some of his books. And, fuck, his clothes. Probably many, many things he can't think of right now and wouldn't be able transport even if he could. Fuck. "Yeah," Bucky says, "let's do that, I guess."

"By the way, it's kinda adorable how you think twenty bucks is walking around money, when it's what I make in a really, really good week," Steve jibes at him gently. "Things might be a little different now."

\---

Although Bucky has lived in the row house they're approaching since he was seven years old, he's only had his current room since he began paying rent. Matt and Patsy's two aunts live on the top floor, and the Barnes family occupies the rest of the house--that is, as much of it as Jimmy can afford at a time. When Bucky was a kid, they used to rent out this entire garden floor, but now Matt's bedroom looks out onto the garden and Bucky's looks onto the street.

The best thing about Bucky's room is that it has its own entrance--he wonders sometimes if he's more or less grateful for it than the servants it was designed for--and so he can come and go as he pleases without climbing the steps to the front door. When they get inside, Bucky stares around the same room he's lived in for the last five years and finds it completely unfamiliar, it's like it belonged to someone else in some other life.

He pulls out the suitcase that he keeps under his bed and then looks at it blankly.

"Clothes," Steve prompts. "And money and letters and photographs and your favorite books--and that quilt your ma sewed you."

"Right," Bucky says and looks at his overflowing bookshelf. "I... yeah, I don't know what my favorite books are."

Steve stares at him. "Sure you do. Gatsby, because you have terrible taste. But don't take that, you have it memorized practically."

"It's about longing, Steve.

"It's about rich assholes who live on Long Island. Take, I don't know, take Newton's Principles or whatever it's called, that you like so much, because you're certifiable. A couple of your Mars books. You were yelling at me about Hemingway the other day, what about that?"

"Liking math isn't insane, Steve."

"It is if you're not in high school. Or, I don't know, a mathematician."

"I could be a mathematician. I feel like I'm about to have a lot of free time on my hands."

"Sure, why not," Steve says. "Keep you out of trouble till you join up." He's gone over to Bucky's dresser and is throwing socks and underwear onto the bed. "You trust me to fold your shirts or are you gonna bitch at me about wrinkles?"

"Hey, Steve," Bucky says. "Can you just... wait here? I have to go up and tell her... well, something, I don't know."

"Sure," Steve says. "I'll just keep going with this, okay?"

"Yeah," Bucky says. "Thanks."

He finds Winifred upstairs in the kitchen, hands in a bowl of what looks like it's going to be meatloaf. "James," she exclaims. "What are you doing home? Are you sick?"

("What's your name?" she'd asked him, kneeling down to meet his eyes the first time they met, just before Jimmy married her. "James Buchanan Barnes," he'd said, briefly because it was a stupid question--didn't she know?--and he thought she was pretty stupid, too. She only ever called him James after that and he never corrected her, because Mama used to call him Bucky and screw this stranger that was trying to replace her anyway. She was maybe as old as he is now. What a terrible life, married to Jimmy.)

"No," he says. "I'm fine. But I'm... well, I'm enlisting."

She says nothing, washes her hands mechanically and then sits limply down at the kitchen table. "Have you told your father?" she asks finally.

He wants to laugh. "I have, yeah. I'm moving out. Steve's downstairs, we're going to pack up my things and then I'll be out of your hair, okay?"

She doesn't reply, gets up and moves toward the china jar she keeps the housekeeping money in. She pulls from there whenever she needs anything for the house, and he just takes out whatever he thinks he needs for the week. It keeps things simple: after Reilly takes his ten percent off the top, half goes to Jimmy for training anyway--whatever Bucky's got left covers all his expenses. He stores it in there though, because... well, for example, Christmas is coming: Matt wants to study piano with that professor guy and he charges three dollars per session! Who's going to pay for that? Jimmy? For a boy? Forget it.

"What are you doing?" Bucky says. "Stop."

"It's your money."

"Hey, I'll make eighty-five a month in the army, I'll be fine."

"James," she says. "You earned it."

"Keep it, okay? I know you were counting on it and it might be a little while till you rent out my room or whatever you figure out."

"James--"

"Look, spend it on Matt's piano lessons and dresses for Patsy or whatever, if it makes you feel better. That's what I would have done with it anyway."

  
She looks as if she wants to press further but she doesn't. "Will you let... us know where you are?"

"Rebecca'll have my address. Or Steve. And I'll write to Matt and Patsy if you think that'll be okay."

Her mouth twists--he can't quite place her expression. Anger? Sadness? She looks at Patsy that way sometimes, actually, like her daughter hatched and turned out to be a seagull and she doesn't know how it happened or what to do about it since she herself is and always will be a chicken. But then she says firmly, "Of course you can write to them. You can use this address." And at his expression which he assumes screams _I would rather swallow my own shoe_ , she corrects, "Or general delivery, if you'd rather. I'll tell Matt to look out for your letters."

"Yeah," he says, "thanks, that'll be good. Matty probably won't want anything, but Patsy can have any of my gear or books that she likes, okay?" And then at her look, he adds, "I won't leave anything there she shouldn't read, I promise."

"It's not the same for a girl, James," she starts and then they both can't help laughing a little at this ridiculous argument they've been having ever since Patsy learned the alphabet.

He wants to go, but there's something else he has to say. "Don't let Matt box," he says. "Professionally, I mean. He's not going to be good enough and it's a lousy gig anyway. Make him go to college."

"Matt's _going_ to college," she says. "I'd never let him fight."

"Okay," he says uncomfortably. "Good, then. I'll be seeing you sometime, I guess." He leans down--god, it feels unnatural--and kisses her on the cheek.

"Stay safe, Bucky," she says quietly, when he steps back.

"I will," he says, unsettled but touched. "You too."

It occurs to Bucky that he could've added 'mom' to the end of his sentence. It would have been nice, probably, but he's halfway down the stairs and why would she care anyway.

\---

Bucky doesn't remember when he realized how he felt about Steve, but he was twenty when he came up with The Rules. That was when he began to be seriously worried he'd never get over it. Because Steve was his best friend, first and foremost, and whatever else he might want with him, that was the thing he could never lose.

So, he has to be Steve's friend.

Steve's friend wouldn't jerk off to thoughts of him, so Bucky tries really hard not to do that. In fact, Steve's friend wouldn't have dirty thoughts, period, when he looked at Steve, so Bucky tries to make sure he's always plenty satisfied in bed, so at least he doesn't add desperation to the list of reasons he can't stop thinking about this stuff. Steve's friend wouldn't monopolize all of Steve's time, so Bucky tries not to go over to his place more than four times a week.

Of course Steve's friend wouldn't keep lying to him either, at least not one of such epic proportions, but Steve can never find out about Bucky's... situation. So Bucky compromises by trying never to lie to him about other stuff. It's not ideal, but it works.

Bucky collapses onto Steve's sofa. "Where's the whiskey?"

Steve must really be worried about him because instead of informing him that it's wherever Bucky left it the last time, he pours out three or four fingers into a mug and shoves it at him.

"Thanks," Bucky says, swallowing it in one go and then pouring himself the same again. When Steve looks vaguely disapproving, he says, "Don't worry, I'll replace it."

"You bought it," Steve says with a shrug. "I don't care about that. What're you going to do now?"

"I don't know. I can stay at Aunt Syd's probably."

Steve makes a face. "You hate it there."

"It's a bed," Bucky says. "Won't be there for long anyway, right?"

"I didn't know you made your decision." Steve's giving him that clear eyed, steady look, the one that makes Bucky feel like Steve's got him under a microscope. Not a lot of hiding possible when Steve decides to go digging. "To enlist, I mean. I thought you were still thinking about it."

Bucky glares at him. "Did you think I was giving you boxing lessons for my health?"

"No, I thought you were doing it to help me."

"C'mon, Rogers," Bucky says, trying to make a joke out of it. "You think I'm yellow or something?"

"Cut it out," Steve snaps. "I'm being serious."

"You're always serious."

"Bucky."

"Steve."

"You're the most aggravating, annoying, moronic pigheaded son of a--"

"Don't hurt yourself there, buddy," Bucky says.

"--what is wrong with you?"

"So, so much." He's not sure if it's the whiskey or just fooling around with Steve, but he's starting to feel better. He'd been thinking _I can't go back_ but there's also: _I don't have to go back, ever._ "Listen, pal, I've never let you run off without me before, don't see why I should start now. You're going? I'm going."

"You think I'm ready?" Steve asks hopefully and then obviously reads his answer on Bucky's face. "Of course you don't. So how are you going to keep working with me from all the way up in Riverdale?"

This is a good point.

"Maybe you can rent a room around here for a couple of weeks."

Bucky laughs and takes another drink. "Can't afford it."

"Buck," Steve says, "tell me you didn't--"

"It's Christmas, Steve."

"You don't even believe in Christmas!" Steve howls. "I'm going back there right now to get your money."

Steve actually starts to get up and look for his jacket, and Bucky has to physically stop him from leaving the apartment. He's got his back against the door, and he's captured Steve's wrists in his hands, and god, he wants, he wants--he shoves Steve away from him as if he's on fire. "Sit down, it's done, let it go."

Steve sits down mutinously. "Fine," he says. "No cure for stupid I guess."

"Would've fed it to you years ago if there was."

"I'm not gonna let you walk out of here with twenty--no? Great, eighteen bucks to your name and no other place to go."

Bucky looks at him, really looks at him and Steve's hurt. He looks like he's maybe starting to think Bucky doesn't want to move in with him, for whatever reason his weird brain's currently dreaming up. Bucky's going to regret this. He already regrets it. "Guess I'll have to stay here then."

"Yeah?" Steve says, perking up. If he were a rabbit, Bucky thinks his nose would twitch.

He sighs internally. "Yeah," he says. "What could possibly go wrong?"

Bucky decides to make supper because he figures if he's not paying rent, he should earn his keep. Also Steve is a truly terrible cook. He's completely unsurprised to discover that Steve has no groceries in besides three eggs in the icebox, and an infinitesimal amount of bacon, but he fries the eggs in the grease, so it works out. Steve even offers to make an honest woman out of him, so that's okay.

They take the bottle of whiskey that Bucky got to replace the other one up to Steve's roof. It's freezing and they're at that point where you're drunk and maudlin and truthful.

"Why don't you want me to like boxing, Buck?"

"Because I don't," Bucky says, and when Steve stares at him, "I fucking hate boxing, okay? I just... I don't know, it's not good for me, maybe it is for other guys. Got a little too much Jimmy in me, I guess."

"You're nothing like him," Steve protests. "Look what you did today."

"There were a lot of days before today, Steve." _Because I'm fine disappointing you behind your back, I guess, but not to your face._ "And now the war--you know mama married him, before his number came up. Maybe he was different back then. He came back a bastard son of a bitch though, that's for sure."

"I don't think you can change a person from who they really are," Steve says, gesticulating wildly. "Bad things happen to everyone--all you can do is decide whether to meet 'em lying down or standing up."

"I feel like I don't agree but I'm too drunk to know why?"

"I'm just saying war couldn't make your dad an asshole if he didn't already have... have assholical--"

"Assholical?? That's not a word, pal."

"--shut up, it is now, Mr. Picturesque--if he didn't already have assholical tendencies.

"Say assholical ten times fast. Bet you can't do it.

"Bet you can't make me," Steve says.

"Look, I just think if she loved him back then, he must've been--I don't know--different."

"Come on, Buck," Steve says, looking almost angry as he takes another swig from the bottle. "Not everyone gets to fall for the right person."

Bucky shuts his lips tightly on the _you're telling me, buddy,_ that threatens to escape him. Steve rambles drunkenly on, "Sometimes--I don't know, I think maybe you love people no matter who they are, but that doesn't mean who they are is good for you."

"Or you for them, I guess," Bucky says.

"I don't think you can hurt someone by loving them, Bucky."

 _You'd be surprised_ , Bucky wants to say. "No, you're right, you probably couldn't." And that's not a lie either. He doesn't see how anyone Steve loved could ever be made less by the experience.

Steve leans forward and clasps his wrist, grips it tight. It's so purposeful, it's startling. Has Steve ever touched him like this, with intent? Though for what, Bucky doesn't know. Steve's hand is cold, work-roughened. It's hard, thin, and deceptively strong. His first finger's got pencil callouses that Bucky can feel burning against his skin and, god, is he about to get hard? "You won't ever be like him," Steve says. "Not possible."

 _You should see it from in here, Steve, and I guarantee you'd be singing a different tune._ Well, at least that took care of one potentially embarrassing problem. Bucky pulls his hand away and uses it to ruffle Steve's hair while Steve tries ineffectuality to bat him away.

"Never say never," Bucky says in an annoying sing-song and then somehow they are playing the most ridiculous game of keep-away with the mostly empty bottle. It is fucking freezing and Bucky is laughing so hard he can barely keep upright and they are drunk and dizzy, spinning in circles in December at daybreak on a Brooklyn rooftop and he thinks, this is happiness, this is what it feels like. Don't ever forget.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So! Another short chapter because I was hoping to have this up a few days ago, but apparently sickness knows no schedule? And I wanted to leave these two beautiful oblivious dorks on a sort of happy note. 
> 
> I have more medical bullshit in June, so the plan is to have _The Fight Game_ wound up before then. The next story in the series, _Killer Instinct_ , covers Bucky's war before Azzano.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow. It's been forever. The medical bullshit, as it turns out, is ongoing. Sigh. However. I've waited so long to post this scrap of a chapter, it's actually become somewhat seasonal? So I'm gonna post what I've got so far with a sincere hope to establish a regular posting schedule in January because... hope springs eternal! And I need something to keep me going till Black Panther! And also! Infinity War! I wish you guys all the happiest of holidays if you celebrate them & hope that you are able to eat food cooked with as much love for you as Bucky has for Steve this season. I'll see you in the New Year if not... maybe... before.... (see, eternal optimism...!)

The worst part of spontaneity, Bucky thinks, is the hangover afterwards. 

Steve's sitting at the long, narrow desk Bucky knocked together out of a door and some crates. It's edged all the way up by the window so all the light falls on his work surface. Bucky could never sit like Steve does with his back to the front door, but Steve doesn't seem to mind. He doesn't even pull the flowered curtain that's meant to separate the kitchen--a tiny narrow counter, a row of cabinets, about two square feet of linoleum on the floor, a sink that can hold about one pot at a time, and a sad little stove with two burners--from the rest of the apartment. Which is why as soon as you walk in the door you're greeted by the terrifying mustard sofa with rusty brown stains (Bucky doesn't want to know) on which he has just signed up to sleep for an indefinite period of time up against one wall. When Steve pulls down his Murphy bed from the opposite wall, there is just barely enough room to walk between them. Bucky is so, so fucked.

"Man, I hate your murder couch," he complains, sinking down onto it anyway for lack of a better option. His head is pounding and while he doesn't wish he was back home, he does sort of miss the shower and the endless cups of coffee that would basically just appear in his hand whenever he wandered into the kitchen. 

"I like it," Steve says for approximately the thousandth time since they dragged it up the stairs. "It's got character. How'd it go down at Saul's?"

He laughs. "Never went in the place. But-- I think maybe I got a job?"

Bucky kind of can't believe the day he's had and it's not even noon. When he showed up in front of Saul's, still slightly drunk and having had only a cursory wash at Steve's sink, not feeling able to deal with the shared bath down the hall--Bucky really wishes he'd known he was leaving yesterday morning; he could've said a fond farewell to his own shower and stolen some of Jimmy's aspirin while he was at it--he was worried that he wouldn't be able to deliver if someone wanted to see the kid go a few rounds with him; he felt shaky and unreal and like he'd fall over if you looked at him funny.

But then there they'd been--Bradley and an older guy, Bucky thought it must be his father or something, but no, his name was Raymond Sinclair, and he had a proposition, and would Bucky like to have coffee at the drug store to discuss it? He would. 

Mr. Sinclair's easily sixty-years old and about five or six inches shorter than Bucky, but he looked like he could still handle himself in a fight. He had a presence, too, that's almost overpowering, like he's somehow more alive than most people. His eyes were kind, though, and Bucky found himself smiling at him.

"So, Mr. Barnes--"

"Bucky, please," he corrected him, embarrassed. 

"--you left kinda abruptly yesterday."

"I had something real important to do, sir," said Bucky. "Those socks won't alphabetize themselves."

"Be that as it may," Mr. Sinclair said and Bucky hadn't felt quite that deflated since the last time Steve's mother raised an unimpressed eyebrow at him, back when he never knew when he'd taken a joke too far. "We'd been led to believe that your father was interested in working with young Isaiah here."

"He, uh, yeah, he does that," Bucky said and felt himself blush, humiliatingly. "He's--yeah, I don't know what to say. I'm sorry. I guess I shouldn't have left you fellas there either. Did he do anything after we were gone?"

Isaiah snorted dismissively. "Could say that."

Bucky groaned. "Don't tell me--"

"We got a challenge here, Mr. Barnes, a honest-to-god duel. _Mano a mano_. Think your daddy wants to show us our place!"

"My daddy couldn't show you his own dick with a microscope," he'd mumbled under his breath, and Isaiah had choked on a laugh, but Mr. Sinclair benignly ignored him.

Isaiah said briefly, "Got a fight with Jim Grady. In three months."

"Jesus. Where should I send flowers?" What is it with these kids and their cock-eyed ideas about what they can handle? Steve's one thing, but this kid's a fighter, he should know what he's doing. Grady is his father's favorite fighter, he does exactly what he's told, never talks back. Fights dirty, though, always has, always will, and last year, he killed a guy in the ring. He's twenty-five at his peak and this kid's seventeen, probably hasn't even finished filling out all the way. 

"You better ask Grady what church he want them at," he said, all blazing determination. "I'm doing this." _Right, right_ , _you could do this all day,_ Bucky sighed to himself. Jesus fucking christ.

Bucky shrugged. "Sure, okay. So, what can I help you with?"

"You said something about enlisting before you and your brother took off," Mr. Sinclair said.

"My brother?" Bucky said. "Matt wasn't--oh, you mean Steve. He's not my brother, but we've been pals since we were kids. I'm bunking up with him till we both join up."

"That guy?" Isaiah hooted. "In the army? What is he, twelve?"

"No, but he was a better man at twelve than you'll ever be," Bucky snapped.

"Boys," Mr. Sinclair said with authority and Bucky bit his tongue. "Mr. Barnes, if you're willing to wait a while before you enlist, we might be able to come to an understanding."

And they had. Now he just has to convince Steve.

"What do you mean, a job?" Steve asks.

"So, funny story, after we left, Jimmy thought he'd try and reenact the civil war or something, and he's got Jim Grady fighting that kid in three months, for the honor of white folks everywhere, I guess."

Steve shakes his head. "Your dad sure is something," he says. "I almost wouldn't believe it, except--"

"Yep," Bucky says, popping the p at the end. "You said it, pal." 

"But what's that got to do with you?"

Bucky pauses. "It's more what it has to do with you," he says finally. "Look, I know you're planning on enlisting right after Christmas."

"Start the new year off right," Steve says, and tosses him a smile. 

"They're not going to take you," Bucky says, too tired to sugar coat it. "Not to fight, Steve, probably not for anything."

"We're at war, Buck. How picky can they be?"

"Fine, they'll take you, but Steve, you're not going to make it through one day of basic training. You can barely stay on your feet and punching through a single round--that's three minutes. What's the fucking point?"

Steve glares at him furiously. "What're you trying to say?"

"I'm saying two, three weeks of lessons isn't going to cut it. If you wanna do this--you're gonna have to do it slow, put in the time."

There's a silence. Bucky can tell Steve wants to yell at him, wants to surge to his feet and protest, hell, wants to run down to the induction center right this minute. He waits. 

"Spit it out," Steve says finally. "I assume you have some reason for bringing this up besides being an asshole."

"Yeah," Bucky says. "I've agreed to spend three months pretending to be Jim Grady and letting that kid beat on me. I want you to stay too."

Steve is surprised into a laugh. "What?"

"You heard me," Bucky says. "Look, it gives us a place to work out in Bed-Stuy, where no one knows us, they're gonna give me twelve bucks a week, and we can build you up for real. But you gotta do what I say, okay? Eating, fighting, running, christ, the whole thing. You'll hate it. You'll hate me too."

"I think I can take it," Steve says, grinning at him.

 "We'll see," Bucky says.

\---

Rebecca comes over for a couple of hours on the night of the twenty-fifth, armed with the Joy of Cooking, which she says she's leaving for Bucky so they don't both starve to death. Bucky looks at it and at the stove where he'd fried two sad little pork chops--("You ever heard of a spice besides salt, Steve?" "There's pepper in the cabinet." "Exactly my point.")--and baked two apples, pretty much exhausting his repertoire, and grimaces. But then he imagines Uncle Norman's outraged face if he saw the pork chops, though, and has to laugh. Cooking is definitely not among the things he expected to be learning this year, but he'll take it.

"Did you go over there for Christmas, Rebecca?" he asks as she curls up on the couch next to him. It's the one day a year she spends with the Barnes side of the family without fail. Bucky wonders how they worked it out sometimes. Did Jimmy insist upon it? Bucky finds that hard to believe, though, since he never really talks with her or anything. He tries to imagine Rebecca joining them for Christmas dinner, but without him to talk to. She isn't close with Matt and Patsy; they're more like cousins to her than siblings, with Winifred as a polite and distant aunt. 

"Yeah," she says, sticking her feet under his thigh. "It was real quiet. And then Matty got those piano lessons he wanted from his mom and Dad hit the roof. No son of mine, etc, etc."

 "Did she cave?" Bucky asks. 

"No," Rebecca says. "Actually she didn't. But I don't know if Matt'll have the guts to go through with it since it makes Dad so upset."

Bucky shrugs. "If he wants it bad enough he will, I guess."

"Sure," Rebecca says. 

"I think he'll do it," Steve says. "He's a good kid."

"He's only a year younger than me," Rebecca protests. 

"Exactly," Steve says. "A kid, like I said--" and Rebecca punches him in the shoulder. 

She twists some of her hair around a finger, looks up at Steve who's sitting on the window sill, with his legs splayed out on his desk. "You-- you guys are going overseas, huh?"

"Yeah," Steve says, "but not for a while yet, Becks, don't worry."

Bucky says, "Yeah, nothing to worry about."

Rebecca does not look convinced, but then, she's a smart girl.

"So," Bucky starts, when he's taking her home, "do they know where I am?"

Rebecca shrugs. "I told Matt and Patsy."

"Rebecca!"

"What?" she says. "They miss you, Bucky."

He grimaces. "I just don't want him to be able to find me."

She rolls her eyes at him. "Like anyone ever tells him anything."

\---

When Bucky shows up at the address he was given, he's surprised to find that it's not a gym, but just another rundown, brownstone rowhouse, except it has boarded up windows that make it look abandoned. Inside, though, there's nothing regular about it. They've knocked out the ceiling between the bottom two floors, so it's this gigantic, echoing space. There's a heavy bag hung up and various other piles of junk covered with dust cloths at the far end of the room.

Bucky stares. "Is this where you live?" he asks Isaiah.

"Naw, man. This is the Sinclairs."

"And why do they have"--he gestures around--"all this? And, uh, who are the Sinclairs? The way you keep saying it, I feel like I should know."

Isaiah looks at him, incredulous. "Man, you don't know Stephanie Sinclair? The lady boss? And you say you've lived in Brooklyn your whole life."

"Jesus," Bucky says. "Jimmy sure knows how to pick 'em." He's never met her of course, but everyone's heard of the lady who's killed at least two guys that Bucky knows about and who supposedly runs all the numbers games in Bed-Stuy, hell, she basically owns the whole goddamn neighborhood. 

 "Yeah," Isaiah says mockingly. "Ray's her brother."

Bucky would like nothing more than to continue this line of conversation--how does Isaiah know the Sinclairs? What _else_ do they run out of here? Like, really, what's under those dust cloths?--but Isaiah doesn't seem like he really wants to talk. 

Better get to work then. Bucky has a moment of terror: he doesn't really know what he's doing, does he? He's not a trainer and he's only ever worked with Jimmy. What the hell does he think is going to happen? That this kid is gonna beat the shit out of Jim Grady so Bucky can get one last one in at his old man before he goes? Not very likely. He imagines Isaiah's shining face, just so much swollen and bloody meat, like Ortega's after Grady was through with him, and feels a little sick. He wants to beg off, back out, something, but then he gets a hold of himself. There's no one better for Isaiah to spar with than someone who was trained by Jimmy and he can be better than Grady, a lot better, if Bucky doesn't fuck it up. 

So don't fuck it up, he tells himself.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a love letter, really: to growing up queer & kinky in NYC; to endless hours watching boxing and learning its mythology from my dad; to long summers spent lazing around Brooklyn brownstones, and most of all, to Bucky Barnes who has taken possession of my heart in a way that is, quite frankly, alarming. #sorrynotsorry 
> 
> Thanks go to the glorious KRB who reads this over for me even though she's A Real Novelist; to the best minion, A. who convinces me she likes it, despite being contractually obligated to say so; to E who lived in that Brooklyn brownstone; and, finally, to D. who listens to all my love-affairs with fictional characters and who actually offered to wear a metal arm to bed (100% film-accurate replica or nothing, baby!). You guys are the best.


End file.
